New Mobilities: Ce-more about what's happening in the mobile world

Mobilities: New Perspectives on Transport and Society

2012-01-10T12:06:00.000Z

A new exciting book just published in the mobilities field: 'Mobilities: New Perspectives on Transport and Society'

Imprint: Ashgate
Illustrations: Includes 4 colour and 30 b&w illustrations
Published: January 2012
Format: 234 x 156 mm
Extent: 386 pages
Binding: Hardback
ISBN: 978-1-4094-1150-5
Price : £65.00 » Website price: £58.50
Edited by Margaret Grieco, Edinburgh Napier University, UK and John Urry, Lancaster University, UK

see
http://www.ashgate.com/default.aspx?page=637&calcTitle=1&title_id=10038&edition_id=13471

Pentagon to use Facebook, Twitter as a resource and weapon

2011-08-15T10:03:00.000+01:00

This is no great surprise after the recent comments on the social media's role in civil unrest - yet it's been on the agenda for quite a while, just surfacing now that public opinion is more open to the possibility:

The Pentagon is developing plans to use social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter as both a resource and a weapon in future conflicts. Its research and development agency is offering 42 million dollars in funding to anyone who can help, the New York Times reports.

According to the NYT article, social media will change the nature of warfare just as surely as the telegraph, the radio and the telephone did, and the Pentagon does not want to be caught falling short on this score.

Some of its goals were laid out in a document being circulated among potential researchers and is to be presented at a briefing on Tuesday in Arlington, Virginia, at the offices of the military contractor System Planning Corporation. As social media play increasingly large roles in fomenting unrest in countries like Egypt and Iran, the U.S. military wants systems to be able to detect and track the spread of ideas both quickly and on a broad scale.

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency is soliciting innovative proposals to help build what would be, at its most basic level, an Internet meme tracker. It would be useful to know, for instance, whether signs of widespread rebellion were authentic or whether they were being created by a fringe group with little real support. Among the tools the successful seeker of government funding might choose to employ: linguistic cues, patterns of information flow, topic trend analysis, sentiment detection and opinion mining.

Social networks can allow the military not only to follow but also to shape the action.

Read original article - 'Pentagon to use Facebook, Twitter as a resource and weapon in future conflicts'

Will electric cars ever take over our roads?

2011-07-11T08:41:00.000+01:00

The debate continues whilst the technology gets better.....and now the Mini is giving it a good shot:

Leo Hickman test drives the Mini E. Photograph: Martin Godwin

On 6 July last year, the US Patents and Trademark Office in Virginia received an application from General Motors to trademark the term "range anxiety". With just a few months to go before GM was set to launch its much-anticipated Chevy Volt – a plug-in hybrid, which would go on to earn the title of "most fuel-efficient compact car in the US" – the company's marketing team was on the offensive. It knew that prospective buyers would need to be convinced early on that the Volt would not have a limited range, as has proved the case with standard electric cars. "It's something we call 'range anxiety' – and it's real," explained Joel Ewanick, GM's head of marketing, when quizzed about the trademark application by car gossip website Jalopnik.com. "We're going to position this as a car first and electric second . . . People do not want to be stranded on the way home from work."

"Range anxiety" is very much on my own mind as I traverse the M40 between London and Oxford at 70mph in a prototype all-electric Mini E lent to me for the morning by BMW, the company currently conducting the world's most comprehensive trial aimed at gathering data on what it will take to convince people to ditch the internal combustion engine and go electric. (Yes, the same BMW that sells around 1.5m internal combustion engines globally each year.) As I look down at the gauge showing me that the car has less than 50% charge left, I have to keep reminding myself that the engineer who showed me round the car at Mini's Mayfair showroom said the car's 100-mile range at full charge would "easily" get me the 55 miles to BMW's Cowley plant just outside Oxford – with or without the air-con on full blast.

Read more here - 'Will electric cars ever take over our roads?'

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GameSave - gaming emergency relief

2011-05-16T08:34:00.000+01:00

I just discovered this very surprising initiative: GameSave, launched by a group called "Geeks Without Bounds", a "not-for-profit alliance of hackers, coders and geeks united by the common goal of assisting communities in distress."

From the website:

"GameSave is a hack-a-thon style event which takes place over the course of 5 weeks, during which multiple teams of game developers and emergency relief professionals will each create a complete game concept and working demo aimed at an aspect of disaster relief." They're basically taking something a lot of people do (gaming) and turning it into a tool to help mitigate disasters.

Climate Change and Society

2011-04-27T16:38:00.000+01:00

John Urry

Climate Change & Society

“A tour de force! Urry shows the centrality of the social – both to comprehend the meaning of the carbon catastrophe that besets us and, thereby, to discover the possibility of a post-carbon society. Essential reading for all.”
Michael Burawoy, University of California, Berkeley

This book explores the significance of human behavior to understanding the causes and impacts of changing climates and to assessing varied ways of responding to such changes. So far the discipline that has represented and modeled such human behavior is economics.

By contrast Climate Change and Society tries to place the “social” at the heart of both the analysis of climates and of the assessment of alternative futures. Urry thus attempts to replace economics with sociology as the dominant discipline in climate change analysis. Sociology has spent much time examining the nature of modern societies, of modernity, but mostly failed to analyze the carbon resource base of such societies. This book seeks to remedy that failing. It should appeal to teachers and students in sociology, economics, environmental studies, geography, planning, politics and science studies, as well as to the public concerned with the long term future of carbon and society.

The Author

John Urry is Professor of Sociology at Lancaster University.

Publication Details

Publishing 13 May, 2011 • 216 pages

978-0-7456-5036-4 Hardback £55.00 978-0-7456-5037-1 Paperback £15.99

For More Information/ Interviews/ Review Copy Requests

Contact Amandine Decam, Polity Marketing Tel: 07825 678552 Email: amandine.decam@politybooks.com

'Blackberry thumb’ is new health hazard

2011-04-06T09:17:00.000+01:00

The UK's Telegraph has a post on how the widespread use of hand-held devices at work has spawned a new condition - the ''BlackBerry thumb'!

Tennis elbow, writer’s block and even athlete’s foot are problems than can cause considerable discomfort and more than a little embarrassment...

..."BlackBerry thumb" is the name given to a repetitive strain injury caused by overusing mobile phones to send emails and texts. The condition is so common that one law firm believes employers can expect a series of lawsuits from staff claiming compensation. Karen Jackson, a co-founder of the solicitors Roberts Jackson, of Wilmslow, Cheshire, said: “If no one knows about the risks involved, they won’t sue, but more and more people are becoming aware of health hazards in the workplace.

'''BlackBerry thumb’ is the overuse of a mobile phone for work purposes and we envisage potential work in this area as more people are using their handsets when they’re on the move, which is leading to repetitive strain injury.

Read original post - ''Blackberry thumb’ is new health hazard'

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Motorway lights to be turned off to cut carbon

2011-04-04T09:20:00.000+01:00

Well... is this a move to seriously 'cut carbon' or is it the beginning of the UK's austerity measures?? This post from The Telegraph reports how lights on three stretches of motorway are to be permanently switched off to 'save cash, cut carbon emissions and reduce light pollution'.....mmm....

The initial “switch off” was one of the first policies to emerge from voters who were asked how to help the Coalition identify where spending cuts could be made.
Shortly after becoming Transport Secretary, Philip Hammond, said all areas of spending were under review.
At the time it triggered fears that road safety could be put at risk, given what had happened when lights were turned off in some towns and villages.

In Wales Powys Council was forced to switch 1,400 street lights back on after public protests.
But such concerns proved to be unfounded, according to Derek Turner, Director for the Highways Agency as he unveiled plans involving 15.9 miles of motorway in north west England. “Evidence so far indicates that switching off the lights hasn’t had an impact on safety,” he said....

Read more at - 'Motorway lights to be turned off to cut carbon'

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EU to ban cars from cities by 2050

2011-04-01T09:54:00.000+01:00

The UK's Telegraph reports on the latest EU carbon-cutting masterplan - to ban cars from London and all other cities across Europe in an attempt to cut CO2 emissions by 60 per cent over the next 40 years....drastic...is it realizable?

The European Commission on Monday unveiled a "single European transport area" aimed at enforcing "a profound shift in transport patterns for passengers" by 2050. The plan also envisages an end to cheap holiday flights from Britain to southern Europe with a target that over 50 per cent of all journeys above 186 miles should be by rail.
Top of the EU's list to cut climate change emissions is a target of "zero" for the number of petrol and diesel-driven cars and lorries in the EU's future cities. Siim Kallas, the EU transport commission, insisted that Brussels directives and new taxation of fuel would be used to force people out of their cars and onto "alternative" means of transport. "That means no more conventionally fuelled cars in our city centres," he said. "Action will follow, legislation, real action to change behaviour."

"If he wants to bring everywhere to a grinding halt and to plunge us into a new dark age, he is on the right track. We have to keep things moving. The man is off his rocker." Mr Kallas has denied that the EU plan to cut car use by half over the next 20 years, before a total ban in 2050, will limit personal mobility or reduce Europe's economic competitiveness.

Read original post - 'EU to ban cars from cities by 2050'

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Home Internet May Get Even Faster in South Korea

2011-03-30T09:49:00.000+01:00

The New York Times has a post on how South Korea, which already claims the world’s fastest Internet connections, now seeks to go even further....in speed:

By the end of 2012, South Korea intends to connect every home in the country to the Internet at one gigabit per second. That would be a tenfold increase from the already blazing national standard and more than 200 times as fast as the average household setup in the United States.

A pilot gigabit project initiated by the government is under way, with 1,500 households in five South Korean cities wired. Each customer pays about 30,000 won a month, or less than $27.“South Korean homes now have greater Internet access than we do,” President Obama said in his State of the Union address last month. Last week, Mr. Obama unveiled an $18.7 billion broadband spending program.

While Americans are clip-clopping along, trailing the Latvians and the Romanians in terms of Internet speed, the South Koreans are at a full gallop. Their average Internet connections are far faster than even No. 2 Hong Kong and No. 3 Japan, according to the Internet analyst Akamai Technologies.

Read more at - 'Home Internet May Get Even Faster in South Korea'

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Mind control puts you in charge of driverless cars

2011-03-28T09:46:00.000+01:00

New Scientist has a post on the prospect of driverless cars using the power of the human mind:

In a step beyond the plans laid by DARPA and Google to create cars that drive themselves, engineers led by Raul Rojas at the Free University of Berlin in Germany have developed a largely autonomous car whose speed and direction can be overridden...by the driver's thoughts. Why do this, you may well ask? Well, imagine your autonomous taxi of the future (think of the Johnny Cabs in Total Recall) is taking you home the wrong way. You just think "right here" and the car will turn and plan a fresh route. Or you change your mind about where you're going mid-journey: again, that's no problem with a thought-mediated drive-by-wire override capability.And people with disabilities that prevent them driving regular cars could experience driving by controlling at least some of the car's functions, too..

...Presumably to ensure everyone knows this is a German innovation in the face of the massive Google/DARPA juggernaut, the smart, semi-autonomous Volkswagen Passat has been christened 'MadeInGermany'. One begins to understand why engineers are not in charge of branding. Anyway, using laser radars, microwave radars and stereo cameras, the car can perform 360-degree obstacle detection and sense a car in front from its fenders up to 200 metres away. In all respects it's a state-of-the-art autonomous car - fully capable of driving itself or interfacing with other interesting control systems like the iPad or iPhone.

Read more at - 'Mind control puts you in charge of driverless cars'

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The mobile phone app that 'spots cancer'

2011-03-25T09:42:00.000Z

The UK's Daily Mail has a post about a new mobile phone app that spots cancer and which is more accurate than the techniques routinely used in hospitals:

The smartphone-based system is up to 100 per cent accurate at telling the difference between benign tumours and their malignant counterparts. It also takes just an hour to make the diagnosis, meaning patients don’t have to spend days or weeks anxiously waiting for test results...

...In future, the smartphone system could be adapted to spot brain, skin and ovarian cancers quickly and accurately.The tiny amount of tissue needed - one thousandth of a millilitre - would also spare patients the pain and risk of having repeatedly having pieces of their growth cut away for testing. And with the most expensive piece of equipment costing just £60 or so, the system would be cheap to run.

Read more at - 'The mobile phone app that 'spots cancer''

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Rise in drivers using Twitter

2011-03-23T08:26:00.000Z

The UK's Telegraph has a report on how increasing numbers of motorists are using Facebook and Twitter while driving with potentially ''catastrophic consequences'', according to police:

Devon and Cornwall Police said it was catching more and more people using mobile phones with internet capability while behind the wheel, creating a high danger of crashing.
It urged drivers to show greater care, saying that rules banning the use of mobile phones while driving had now been in place for a ''long, long time''.Inspector Richard Price, from the force's roads policing unit, said: ''With the new mobile phones, it is becoming more commonplace for people to use them to access social media than for texting while driving.''The availability of information is sometimes too tempting to drivers and often they will be picking up the phone and updating their (Facebook) site.
''It really is unacceptable.''

The force has launched Operation Vortex to clamp down on ''complacent and arrogant behaviour'' by drivers.

It said research by the RAC had shown one in five motorists in the south-west had admitted to checking social media alerts whilst driving, making this a particular focus of the campaign alongside speeding, drink-driving and failing to wear a seatbelt.

Read more at - 'Rise in drivers using Twitter'

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Mobile phones could run for months between charges

2011-03-21T09:18:00.000Z

The UK's Telegraph has a short post about how mobile phones could soon run for months rather than days between charges, after scientists discovered how to make them work more efficiently:

A team of electrical engineers at Illinois University in the US believe their method will enable mobiles and laptops to run for up to 100 times longer between charges.
It focuses on changing the way a device's digital memory works, as this consumes much of the charge.
At the moment mobile phone memories contain thin metal wires. Every time information is accessed, electricity is passed through them to retrieve the data. The electrical engineers thought that if the size of the components used to store and retrieve the information could be reduced, so could the amount of electricity.
They have discovered a way of using carbon nanotubes - tiny tubes 10,000 times thinner than a human hair - instead.
Feng Xiong, a graduate student on the team who was lead author on a paper, to be published in the journal Science, explained: "The energy consumption is essentially scaled with the volume of the memory bit.

Read full original post - 'Mobile phones could run for months between charges'

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With this Skype I do wed: Couple get married by web video

2011-03-14T07:46:00.000Z

Well, it looks like a new trend is starting.....marriage by Skype. This began through a groom being ill in hospital, yet it could grow. Saves on travel expenses!

It was meant to be a tradition wedding with the bride wearing white, the groom a tuxedo and 500 guests watching the ceremony. But instead of standing together to take their vows, Samuel Kim and Helen Oh were seven miles apart as she said 'I do' on a computer screen. The couple married in Fullerton, southern California, on Skype video after he fell ill and landed in a hospital isolation ward.

Skype wedding: Bride Helen Oh stands alone at the altar as her husband-to-be Samuel Kim watches her from his isolation ward on the jumbo-sized screen.

Guests watched on jumbo-sized screens as the Korean couple, both 27, stood alone - Oh at the Grace Ministries church and Kim in his room at the UCI Medical Center in Orange County. He told her: 'Helen, my wife, I'm very, very sorry for not being able to walk you down the aisle or stand at the altar, but today is just one day. 'We're going to live for a very long time. I promise to be a perfect husband from now on to make up for this.' Five cameramen captured the ceremony last Saturday on split screens while Kim watched on a laptop in his room which had been filled with flowers by nurses.

Chinese mega-city building huge security system

2011-03-09T07:46:00.000Z

The UK's Telegraph has a post about the Chinese mega-city of Chongqing which plans to build a $2.6 billion (£1.6 billion) security system that will be one of the world's largest with 500,000 surveillance cameras:

The system would dwarf a network of 40,000 security cameras installed in the capital of China's far-western Xinjiang region last year, following deadly July 2009 clashes between Muslim Uighurs and members of the majority Han group.
Chongqing's more than 500,000 cameras, which are due to be installed by 2012, will mainly be used for crime prevention, emergency controls and rescue operations, a police spokesman told the Global Times.
The computerised cameras will be managed under one network, allowing authorities and emergency services in the province-sized area of more than 30 million people to share the video feeds, the paper said.
A crackdown on organised crime two years ago in the sprawling municipality led to numerous high-level prosecutions for corruption and mafia crime that have shocked the nation as it revealed Chongqing's underworld.

See original post - 'Chinese mega-city building huge security system'

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If It's Not the Destination and It's Not the Journey...

2011-03-04T07:53:00.003Z

A post over at John Thackara's Observer's Room points to how much of our city traffic is caused by drivers just searching for a place to park! Yep - read on.....

A study by Transportation Alternatives found that up to 45 percent of traffic in an area of Brooklyn was caused by cars circling the streets looking for parking. And in 2006, UCLA professor of urban planning Donald Shoup calculated that, within a year, vehicles searching for parking in a small business district in LA consumed 47,000 gallons of gas and produced 730 tons of carbon dioxide.

Faced by such shocking numbers, the default reaction of some people has been to look to technology for an answer. Let's invent a system, they resolved, that enables drivers to find open parking spaces without delay. A team at Rutgers University, for example, uses ultrasonic sensors, GPS receivers and cellular networks to find empty parking spaces; they relay this information to drivers using internet maps and navigation systems.

To optimize the search process, the Rutgers team placed ultrasonic sensors on the passenger-side door of three cars and used them to collect data on empty parking spaces over a period of two months during daily commutes through Highland Park, New Jersey. From this, the engineers developed an algorithm that used these ultrasound readings to reveal the number of available parking spaces with 95 percent accuracy. By combining this information with GPS data, they were able to produce maps of occupied and unoccupied spaces that were 90 percent accurate.

Read original post at - 'If It's Not the Destination and It's Not the Journey...'

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Tiny device could transform mobile communications

2011-02-28T09:10:00.001Z

The Guardian UK has a post on a new device that could transform mobile communications - a golf ball-sized mobile phone base station that can be deployed 'almost anywhere' in the world:

Mobile phone base stations no bigger than a golf ball could help to bridge the digital divide and bring mobile broadband to distant areas both in the developing and developed world, the networking company Alcatel-Lucent has claimed.

The company said on Monday that its new technology, which shrinks many of the functions of a standard base station down to a few chips which fit in a cube it calls "lightRadio", would mean that mobile networks could run their systems with lower power demands and half the cost overall, while broadening deployment. The "lightRadio" technology, which will be tested by a number of mobile operators around the world including Orange, Verizon in the US and the world's largest network, China Mobile, could halve network operating costs and do the same for power demands, said Wim Sweldens, head of the company's mobile business at a presentation in London.

The base stations – reduced from the bulky cabinet of past years to a system-on-a-chip integrated circuit made by semiconductor company Freescale – can be installed wherever there is electricity, and can then connect either over an internet connection or via microwave links to processing units elsewhere.

Read more at - 'Tiny device could transform mobile communications'

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For Funerals Too Far, Mourners Gather on the Web

2011-02-25T09:20:00.000Z

The New York Times has an interesting post on the trend in web-streaming weddings, funerals, and like-minded events:

In an age of commemorating birthdays, weddings and anniversaries on Facebook and Twitter, it was perhaps inevitable that live Web-streaming funerals for friends and loved ones would be next.

It is no surprise that the deaths of celebrities, like Michael Jackson, or honored political figures, like the United States diplomat Richard Holbrooke, are promoted as international Web events. So, too, was the memorial service for the six people killed Jan. 8 in Tucson, which had thousands of viewers on the Web.
But now the once-private funerals and memorials of less-noted citizens are also going online.

Several software companies have created easy-to-use programs to help funeral homes cater to bereaved families. FuneralOne a one-stop shop for online memorials that is based in St. Clair, Mich., has seen the number of funeral homes offering Webcasts increase to 1,053 in 2010, from 126 in 2008 (it also sells digital tribute DVDs).

During that same period, Event by Wire, a competitor in Half Moon Bay, Calif., watched the number of funeral homes live-streaming services jump to 300 from 80. And this month, the Service Corporation International in Houston, which owns 2,000 funeral homes and cemeteries, including the venerable Frank E. Campbell funeral chapel on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, said it was conducting a pilot Webcasting program at 16 of its funeral homes.

Read more at 'For Funerals Too Far, Mourners Gather on the Web'

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Social networks vs. US Intelligence

2011-02-22T09:14:00.000Z

Al Jazeera's John Terrett reports in a video (see link below) how,

The heads of US intelligence agencies have been testifying before a congressional committee on issues regarding threats to the country's national security. Recent political revolts have exposed the failure of intelligence services to timely alert the White House about the situations in Egypt and Tunisia.

Questions have emerged as to how the intelligence services were less well informed than people on Facebook and Twitter about the spirit of revolution enveloping the Middle East.

Read more here - 'Social networks vs. US Intelligence'

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Social networks, social revolution

2011-02-17T12:56:00.000Z

Have Youtube, Facebook and Twitter become the new weapons of mass mobilisation? This is what Al-Jazeera is now discussing on one of their programs:

Information is power, but 21st century technology has unleashed an information revolution, and now the genie is out of the bottle. Youtube, Facebook and Twitter have become the new weapons of mass mobilisation; geeks have taken on dictators; bloggers are dissidents; and social networks have become rallying forces for social justice.

As people around the world challenge authorities, from Iran to Tunisia, Egypt to Yemen, entire societies are being transformed as ordinary citizens see the difference, imagine the alternative, and come together to organise for a better future.

So, are social networks triggering social revolution? And where will the next domino fall?

Joining Marwan Bishara to discuss these issues are: Carl Bernstein, a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist; Amy Goodman, the host and executive producer of Democracy Now!; Professor Emily Bell, the director of digital journalism at Columbia University; Evgeny Morozov, the author of The Net Delusion: The Dark Side of Internet Freedom; Professor Clay Shirky, the author of Cognitive Surplus: Creativity and Generosity in a Connected Age.

This episode of Empire can be seen from Thursday, February 17, at the following times GMT: Thursday: 0630, 2030; Friday: 1230; Saturday: 0130; Sunday: 0630, 2010.

See more - and watch the video - over at 'Social networks, social revolution'

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Cuba ‘goes digital’

2011-02-12T09:12:00.000Z

It appears from this post over at EuroNews that Cuba is finally embracing the 'digital age'...will it also encourage social networking and 'smart mobs' I wonder??

More than five decades after the Cuban revolution, the Caribbean island has embraced the digital revolution. A high-speed fibre optic Internet cable connecting Cuba with Venezuela arrived on the island on Wednesday. It was brought ashore in a ceremony attended by dignitaries from both countries.

Officials say it will provide a connection speed 3,000 times faster than at present. Despite the revamped access, authorities say Internet use will be limited to “social” purposes and that priority would be given to developing public Internet access centres, especially in universities and other educational institutions.

Read more at 'Cuba ‘goes digital’

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A future without car crashes?

2011-02-09T08:42:00.000Z

The BBC website has an interesting piece on the latest technologies in the auto-industry, including auto-braking and the 'intelligent windscreen' to try to eliminate fatal car crashes:

More than a million people die in car accidents each year but experts in the industry now believe fatal smashes could be eliminated. Some hope there could be an end to car crashes altogether. Scientists and engineers are developing technology and enhancements to cars that would aid drivers to the extent that crashes would become rarer events. Bad weather conditions and poor judgement would be mitigated by the car itself.

But in the short term the focus is on car crash victims, with sophisticated technology being mapped out to ensure drivers can survive even truly catastrophic accidents..

...Volvo believe in the future they can stop cars from ever crashing. They are developing auto-braking technology to ensure cars come to a stop when they sense another car coming close to them - both from the front and the side...

...At General Motors' research lab in Detroit, scientists are investigating how the car itself can make up for our shortcomings - by enhancing the driver's senses.

They are developing a prototype windscreen, which they hope will give drivers a kind of "superhuman" vision - the Advanced Vision System.

Read more at - 'A future without car crashes?'

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Cyber attacks: from Facebook to nuclear weapons

2011-02-04T09:26:00.000Z

The Telegraph has a short piece on how cyber attacks are set to become part of everyday life in the 21st Century, citing such targets as social networking sites to secret nuclear facilities; and the need to establish new global conventions:

World leaders are facing calls to amend the Geneva and Hague conventions to draw up “rules of engagement” for “cyber war”. Here are some of main types of cyber attack:
Denial-of-Service (DoS):
Also known as distributed denial-of-service attack (DdoS), this involves crmiinals attempting to bring down or cripple individual websites, computers or networks often by flooding them with messages.
Malware:

Malicious software designed to take over individuals’ computers in order to spread a bug onto other people’s devices or social networking profiles. It can also infect a computer and turn it into part of a “botnet” – networks of computers controlled remotely by hackers known as “herders” to spread spam or virusus.

State cyber attacks:

US and Israeli intelligence agencies are believed to have recently used a mysterious computer virus called Stuxnet to carry out an invisible attack on Iran’s secretive nuclear programme.

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad recently admitted that its facilities had been infected by the programme which appears to target and disable uranium enrichment centrifuges....

Read original post - 'Cyber attacks: from Facebook to nuclear weapons'

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Britons spend more time driving than socialising

2011-01-31T08:35:00.001Z

It appears that despite rising petrol prices, the average UK motorist now clocks up a record 7,413 miles per year, according to new research. Well....this is modern life in our 'iron cages'!

Britons have become so reliant on their cars that most spend more than one working day (10 hours) every week driving. This compares to just 3.7 hours spent walking, 2.7 hours showering and 4.6 hours socialising with friends and family.

The yearly total of 7,413 miles is the equivalent of driving from London to Cape Town and comes at an average costs of £1,078. As the need for social, shopping and commuting mobility has increased, motorists now spend nearly two more days driving every year than they did ten years ago. The average motorist now spends three full years of their life driving. Men spend 533 hours behind the wheel each year, which is longer than women who spend 506 hours driving each year. Men are also more likely to undertake longer, one-off drives - spending 21 hours a year driving on weekend trips and 29 hours behind the wheel on business.

The top journey for women on the other hand is the daily drive to work (122 hours a year), followed by shopping trips (91 hours) and visiting friends and family (96 hours).

Read more at the original post - 'Britons spend more time driving than socialising'

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‘Stranded: An Eruption of Disruption’

2011-01-28T09:11:00.000Z

The latest edition of the journal 'Mobilities' is now released: ‘Stranded: An Eruption of Disruption’ and the mayhem that followed the eruption of Eyjafjallajökull volcano – some of the articles have been kindly given free access by their authors which we hope you will download and enjoy.

        Stranded: An Eruption of Disruption
Thomas Birtchnell; Monika Büscher       FREE
        Anticipation, Materiality, Event: The Icelandic Ash Cloud Disruption and the Security of Mobility
Peter Adey; Ben Anderson
        On the Edge of Chaos: European Aviation and Disrupted Mobilities
Michael O’Regan
        A Fiasco of Volcanic Proportions? Eyjafjallajökull and the Closure of European Airspace
Lucy Budd; Steven Griggs; David Howarth; Stephen Ison FREE
        Grounded: Impacts of and Insights from the Volcanic Ash Cloud Disruption
Jo Guiver; Juliet Jain
        People and Technologies as Resources in Times of Uncertainty
David Barton
        Emotional Eruptions, Volcanic Activity and Global Mobilities – A Field Account from a European in the US During the Eruption of Eyjafjallajökull
Ole B. Jensen
        Inspired by Eruptions? Eyjafjallajökull and Icelandic Tourism
Karl Benediktsson; Katrín Anna Lund; Edward Huijbens
        Eyjafjallajökull 4′33″: A Stillness in Three Parts
Daryl Martin
        Fire as a Metaphor of (Im)Mobility
Bülent Diken    FREE
Individual Articles
        Constructing Global/Local Subjectivities – The New Zealand OE as Governance through Freedom
Anika Haverig
        The Circular International Migration of New Zealanders: Enfolded Mobilities and Relational Places
Allan M. Williams; Natalia Chaban; Martin Holland

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Researchers launch mobile device 'to spot paedophiles'

2011-01-26T09:01:00.000Z

Lancaster University is back on the digital map of research as its Child Defence project has launched a mobile device 'to spot paedophiles'.See here:

A mobile phone application which claims to identify adults posing as children is to be released.

The team behind Child Defence says the app can analyse language to generate an age profile, identifying potential paedophiles.

Isis Forensics developed the tool after parental concerns over children accessing sites on their mobiles.

But child protection experts warned against such technology lulling people into thinking they are safe.

Child Defence project leader James Walkerdine, based at Lancaster University, said: "This software improves children's chances of working out that something isn't right."Parents told us they would much prefer to see software solutions that empowered and educated their children to help them protect themselves."

Child campaigning charity NSPCC hopes the application will encourage children to report the crime - but warned of complacency.

Read more at - 'Researchers launch mobile device 'to spot paedophiles''

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Mobile to be used to control satellite

2011-01-24T09:01:00.000Z

It appears that British engineers are to send a mobile phone into space to control a satellit...according to this post in The Telegraph:

The phone, which will run Google's Android operating system, will take pictures of the Earth later this year.
The project is being run by a British firm called Surrey Satellite Technology Limited, based in Guildford, which wants to test a modern phone in the most hostile environment possible, the BBC reported.

Although it will be a smartphone, the precise model has not been disclosed. It will be the first time a phone has gone into orbit.

Shaun Kenyon, the project manager, said: "Modern smartphones are pretty amazing.
"They come now with processors that can go up to 1GHz, and they have loads of flash memory. First of all, we want to see if the phone works up there, and if it does, we want to see if the phone can control a satellite.

Read more at - 'Mobile to be used to control satellite'

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Use of Mobile Phones Banned in Indian Village to Stop illicit Romance

2010-12-23T11:03:00.003Z

Now here's an interesting 2011 story to begin the year with - one village in India and their approach to mobile phones - to halt illicit romances!!

Use of mobile phones has been banned by a local council in northern India. The reason given is to ban unmarried women from carrying mobile phones and also to halt romances between youngsters from different castes.

In Uttar Pradesh state, the Baliyan council has decided to ban mobile phone after a series of elopements. Over the last year, at least 23 couples eloped against their parents wishes. Jatin Raghuvanshi, a village elder, commented that the panchayat (assembly) was convinced that the reason of the recent surge in series of elopement was cell phones as the young loves planned their elopement over using them...

...A spokesman for the village assembly, Satish Tyagi, has said that all parents were told to ensure that their unmarried daughters do not use cell phones. The Indian constitution has banned caste discrimination but still it influences many aspects of life, especially marriage.

Read more at - 'Use of Mobile Phones Banned in Indian Village to Stop illicit Romance'

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Car or computer? How transport is becoming more connected

2010-11-26T09:10:00.000Z

As was discussed in the book 'After the Car' modern cars are becoming highly sophisticated in how they are connected, in terms of integrating with transport information as well as the potential for being part of a social network. This interesting article outlines some of the recent developments:

Fiat is using software that tells drivers how to make better, and more fuel efficient, choices behind the wheel.

They are among the 612 Mini E cars being trialed in the US, UK and Germany since 2009. These plug-in electric models are leased to customers, and BMW - the owner of the Mini - is monitoring every aspect of the cars' use, in almost every scenario, as they are put through their paces.The amount of data that can now be collected about how drivers use their cars is unprecedented. And the impact of so much information is potentially huge. Imagine having your car post MOT reminders to your social networks, or share your location with friends, or prove that you were not responsible for an accident.

Behaviour changing

A British company, Riversimple, has designed a range of tiny hydrogen-powered cars, which it will roll out in Leicester in 2012.They will collect every minute detail about how the cars are used. If the pilot goes well, they are already discussing ways of connecting the cars to social media, and sharing data about how the cars are used."Drivers could play games to see who is driving the most efficiently," says Rosie Reeves, Riversimple's sustainability officer.Italian carmaker Fiat has been compiling data from the Blue&Me navigation systems installed on many of its cars over a six-month period. It may be the largest such data harvest done by a major carmaker.

"We can extract a number of data - on how the pedals are used, petrol consumption, braking," says Candido Peterlini, vice president for product development at Fiat. It developed eco:Drive from the data collected from 420,000 car journeys of 5,700 drivers in five countries.

Read more at - 'Car or computer? How transport is becoming more connected'

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DocNext on IDFA International Documentary Festival Amsterdam

2010-11-15T08:28:00.000Z

Here is some information on an upcoming film festival where young and new film-makers use media technologies to frame/capture their environments. It looks promising -

Doc Next is a special program of IDFA, featuring short documentaries by a new generation of young film talents from Europe using accessible media technologies to zoom in on their environments. For the first time, their documentaries are being shown on the big festival screen.

At the Doc Next talk show, young documentary makers take centre stage. We seize their films and stories to discuss the challenges and possibilities of user-generated media content with festival organisers, media broadcasters and documentary experts. How can do-it-yourself documentaries inspire different media domains and contribute to inclusive public opinion sharing in Europe? How can this new generation of storytellers help mainstream media to attract new audiences?

Doc Next is hosted by Leena Pasanen, executive producer at Yle Fact & Culture. Yle is Finland's national public service broadcasting company. Leena has built up a strong reputation as one of the most internationally orientated and engaged European commissioning editors, especially known for her support to new talent.
Contributing guests are Doc Next’s young filmmakers Ahang Bashi (Sweden), Solomon Walter-Kelly (UK), Erhan Arik (Turkey), Vieru Dan Ilian (Romania) and media professionals Patricia Aufderheide (Professor of Film and Media Arts in the School of Communication at American University in Washington), Noel Goodwin (Youth Programmer, British Film Institute, UK), Arman Tadevosyan (Curator and initiator 5th FLOOR in Armenia), Beadie Finzi (Founding director Britdoc Channel 4, UK) and ARTE.

Location
Doc Next will take place on 20 November 2010, 14.30 – 18.00 (drinks at 16.30), in the Escape venue. Escape is situated at Rembrandtplein 11, Amsterdam.
Public transportation: take tram 4, 9 or 20 from Amsterdam Central Station, get off at Rembrandtplein. If you are coming by car you can park at Stopera Parkeergarage, Waterlooplein, Amsterdam.

European Cultural Foundation and IDFA

More information :
http://www.eurocult.org/youth-and-media
http://www.idfa.nl

The bubble car is back

2010-10-27T12:09:00.000+01:00

Welcome to the world of rapidly developing urban transit - a shift towards smaller, urban-centric networked vehicles for the mega-cities of the future...and this article from the Economist is spot on.....on the 'bubble' that is!

MANY car designers are convinced that a radical change in automobile technology is going to be needed for the crowded megacities of the future. By 2030 more than 60% of the world’s population is expected to be living in cities, up from 50% now, and more of them will be able to afford cars. The need to reduce emissions, an acute scarcity of land for roads and parking, and the prospect of laws restricting conventional cars all point to the idea that different and smaller types of vehicle will be in demand. With that in mind, some of those designers are coming up with things that look a lot like a vehicle that was familiar more than 50 years ago. Welcome to the return of the bubble car.

Bubble cars were built to provide cheap personal transport. Most were two-seaters with just three wheels. They became particularly popular when fuel prices shot up in 1956, during the Suez crisis. One of the first was the Italian-made Iso Isetta. Germany was a prolific builder, too. Messerschmitt and Heinkel, forbidden to ply their former trade of building military aircraft, turned to bubble cars as a peacetime alternative. BMW, meanwhile, re-engineered the Isetta to use an engine from one of its motorcycles.

Rising incomes, falling fuel prices and changing fashions did for the original bubble cars, but the idea seems ripe for revival and three new versions, known as EN-Vs (for Electric Networked-Vehicles), are enthralling the crowds at the Expo 2010 in Shanghai. They can be driven normally or operated autonomously, with their occupants doing other things while the cars automatically avoid bumping into one another. They can also be summoned from their parking places using a mobile phone. And instead of being powered by smoky little petrol engines, they are driven electrically. What is most intriguing, however, is that they balance on just two wheels.

The three EN-Vs, each with a different body shape, were built by a partnership between General Motors (GM), an American company, and Shanghai Automotive Industry Corporation, one of China’s biggest carmakers.

Read more at 'The bubble car is back'

Thanks David for the heads up!

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Motorists abandon cars as costs rise

2010-10-21T08:50:00.000+01:00

The UK's Telegraph has a short piece on what it sees as a cost-cutting trend - people changing their driving habits; i.e., driving less...which may be a growing trend if the price of oil continues to rise as the value of the £ continues to drop...

As many as 8 per cent of car owners have given up driving altogether because of the expense, the survey by moneysupermarket.com found. And 57 per cent of those polled said they had reduced the amount of time spent behind the wheel.

But 30.5 per cent of the 860 people surveyed said they were sticking to their usual driving pattern, as they could just about afford to, while 4.5 per cent said they were not changing their habits at all. Steve Sweeney, head of car insurance at moneysupermarket.com said: ''We're all looking at ways to lower our everyday outgoings and getting behind the wheel is a real drain on finances. ''With recent fuel price hikes and increasing costs of car insurance, drivers are turning savvy and making changes to their usual habits to drive down costs.''

He went on: ''Cutting out driving altogether is the ultimate sacrifice to take. Shopping around for the best deal on your car insurance cover is crucial to reduce the overall costs of motoring; providers count on your apathy to reap the profits and do not reward your loyalty with a cheaper premium.

''Taking further steps like fitting an approved car alarm or immobiliser and parking in a locked garage if possible are other ways to reduce the overall cost.'

Read original post - 'Motorists abondon cars as costs rise'

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Google to unveil driverless cars

2010-10-11T09:08:00.000+01:00

Now Google is getting in on the act - trying to come up with a 'driverless car'...well, makes sense when you consider that the major issue is the software component. And, in fact, it sounds like Google is having some success....read on.....


A Google car has even driven through the steep and curvy Lombard Street in San Francisco [GALLO/GETTY]

Google is planning to introduce driverless cars in an ambitious project that has already seen the cars secretly driving through busy California roads, clocking a total of 1,000 miles without any human intervention.

The California-based company said on its website the cars have done more than 140,000 miles with only occasional human control.

According to an official Google blogpost by Sebastian Thrun, the company's software engineer, one car even successfully negotiated San Farncisco's Lombard Street, one of the steepest and curviest street in the US.

But Thrun believes that the self-driving cars are still about eight years away from mass production.

The technology developed by Google enables the automated cars to drive themselves using video cameras, radar sensors and a laser range finder to "see" other traffic, as well as detailed maps.

Self-driving cars have been around for over four decades, but a breakthrough came in 2004 when they were tested in a series of Grand Challenge events organised by the US government. Following the failure of the first contest, a Stanford team led by Thrun built the car that won a race against a vehicle built by a Carnegie Mellon University team. And within two years, another such event showed that self-driving vehicles can successfully negotiate busy urban roads.

The 'google edge'

Google's street view data gives it an edge with photographs of every street in the US, UK, Ireland and many major world cities, enabling the cars to plan their routes by seeing junctions, roads well in advance, according to data from the company.

Read more at - 'Google to unveil driverless cars'

Smart cars to mean safer driving

2010-09-20T09:55:00.000+01:00

As was discussed in my book with John Urry - After the Car - one side of in-car technologies will be increased 'intelligent sensors' placed into cars. As this recent post from the BBC explains,

Cars could soon be ringing the emergency services themselves if they are involved in a crash.

Sensors embedded in future vehicles could also let emergency services work out the severity of the crash and how many people were involved.

The predictions came at a symposium considering the changes ushered in by the spread of small, smart processors. The growing number of on-board computers could also spell big changes for the way people drive.

"The car is probably going to be the most compute-intensive possession that we will have," said Steve Wainwright, European manager at Freescale Semiconductor which makes many of the chips inside car control systems.

Mr Wainwright said average cars have 25-30 electronic control units onboard already and high-end cars probably carry up to 80. These tiny computers are in charge of many car systems such as stability control, power distribution, safety and many others.

Increasingly, said Mr Wainwright, they are helping to augment a person's driving skill and that trend would only continue as technologies such as collision detection systems and radar become more commonplace.

Read more at 'Smart cars to mean safer driving'

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City scares drivers with ’3D girl’ that runs into road

2010-09-17T09:58:00.001+01:00

Good idea or a sure fire accident? The debate is on....and what would be your reaction if you 'think' you saw a young child in the road.....albeit a clever 3D drawing??

For the past week, drivers on 22nd Street in the ritzy suburb of West Vancouver, British Columbia, have come across an alarming sight: A small girl running out into the road to chase a ball.

As their hearts leap to their throats and their feet move to the brake pedal, the drivers realize it's an illusion -- a "3D" image drawn on the pavement to get drivers to slow down. The "3D girl" isn't really 3D -- it's a cartoon drawn on the pavement in a distorted fashion so as to appear three-dimensional, the culmination of a pilot project from the British Columbia Automobile Association, an affiliate of the AAA, and the city of West Vancouver.

It's an innovative idea that some critics say could cause accidents. "I think it's awful. I think it's dangerous," Sam Schwartz, a former traffic commissioner in New York City, told ABC News. "I think drivers are always scanning and suddenly they see this image up, they may very well panic."

Read original post at - 'City scares drivers with ’3D girl’ that runs into road'

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Britain's 'seven social tribes' mapped

2010-09-15T09:44:00.000+01:00

An interesting novel way of cartography when it comes to mapping Britain's 'social tribes'...aA team of cartographers at London's City University have created a visualisation of Britain which makes 'the traditional map of the British Isles look outdated by comparison'.The Telegraph article reports that:

South of England as visualised by the Seven Social Tribes of Britain by City University London's giCentre.

The mosaic-like map beautifully visualises the "Seven Social Tribes of Britain", combining postcode information with demographic data from the Government.

This map emphasises different types of people and their concentration in different areas of the country, unlike traditional maps which highlight geography.

Each set of pixels on the map is a postcode and is coloured according to economic measures based on census data...The seven tribes of Britain visualised on the map are: Blue Collar Communities, City Living, Countryside, Prospering Suburbs, Constrained by Circumstances, Typical Traits and Multicultural.

Read more at - 'Britain's 'seven social tribes' mapped'

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Virtual worlds: is this where real life is heading?

2010-09-13T09:58:00.000+01:00

Things have been quite for a while concering virtual worlds, now that the hype around Second Life has more or less died down....anyway, this recent post from The Guardian has some useful recent overviews, such as concerning apps like Farmville:

Recently a man bought a space station for $330,000, while last month Small Planet Foods, a subsidiary of General Foods, introduced a new brand of organic blueberries. What have these two products got in common? Neither actually exist. Well, not except as pixels in the virtual worlds where they are traded. Only the money is real.

The space station was sold in the virtual world Entropia Universe, which has its own economy and currency. The buyer, who converted his $300,000 into 3.3m PED (Project Entropia dollars), is convinced that virtual shops on his virtual space station will produce virtual profits that can be converted back into real dollars. The blueberries represent a "brand extension" of a product that exists in the real world as US company General Foods aims to establish a presence in FarmVille, a game which exists as an application on Facebook and which at its peak has had nearly 80 million players. It is a classic example of a new genre.

Farmers in FarmVille buy cartoon-like virtual farm animals, which have to be regularly fed, or crops that require fertiliser (virtual, of course) to help them grow, in order to be more successful than their friends. The real-time game has its own virtual currency that makes it easier for members to trade and for the game's makers to profit. Parent company Zynga has revenues of more than $600m a year which come mainly from FarmVille, despite competition from half a dozen other farm games on Facebook. Zynga is reckoned to be worth between $4bn and $5bn, based on the value of investment stakes that have been taken in it.

To many, this seems crazy: why spend real money to buy a virtual currency to purchase food in order to stop a pig that doesn't exist from dying through lack of food? The easy answer is why not – if that's what you want to do. It is arguably a lot more "real" – whatever that means these days – than, say, sitting like a couch potato watching a soap on television.

This might still seem the stuff of fantasy but it's where real life seems to be heading: according to some analysts, we are in the midst of a virtual revolution that might one day be considered as important as the industrial revolution. Nic Mitham, founder of KZero, a Cambridge-based consultancy, says that there are 175 virtual worlds that are live or in live beta and that the number of registered users to them has risen from 880 million in the fourth quarter of 2009 to 1.1 billion today, a 25% increase within six months in the middle of a recession. The registered population of virtual worlds (even if this is not the same as active users) is greater than the populations of the US and Europe combined.

Read more at - 'Virtual worlds: is this where real life is heading?'

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Tesco launches UK's first 'drive-thru' supermarket

2010-09-10T09:52:00.000+01:00

True 'car mobility' now comes to grocery shopping - getting your bags without even having to leave the car. Tesco is trialling a new service that will allow customers to pick up their weekly shop via 'drive-thro':

The supermarket will launch the trial at a store in Baldock, Hertfordshire, this week before a possible national roll-out.Under the scheme – which aims to appeal to busy mothers and shopaphobes alike – customers will order shopping online and then drive to a designated area in the store's car park to have their products loaded into their car at a pre-arranged time. Tesco said that the service has been designed for shoppers who want their goods picked and packed but who do not have the time to wait at home for delivery.

Laura Wade-Gery, chief executive of Tesco.com and Tesco Direct, said: "This will be especially popular with busy mums who have the school run and children's activities to manage. It also offers a solution to parents who want to avoid the challenge of shopping in a busy store with children in tow."

Read more at - 'Tesco launches UK's first 'drive-thru' supermarket'

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GPS Trackers Secretly Placed in Unilever Laundry Detergent Boxes

2010-09-08T09:37:00.002+01:00

We are now seeing the shift of GPS tracking devices from larger commercial objects to marketing objects...which mirrors WalMarts move into RFID chipping its products:

The household cleaning product giant Unilever has secretly placed GPS tracker transmitters in laundry detergent boxes to track consumers to their homes. With an array of electronic sensors, team of Unilever agents can now pinpoint the exact location of the GPS trackers and walk right up to your front door. They can even remotely set off a beeper inside the box using radio electronics.

The point of all this? It's part of Unilever's new marketing campaign to convince consumers in Brazil to purchase more boxes of Omo laundry detergent.

The GPS trackers, you see, are only embedded in "prize winning" boxes of Omo detergent. If you happen to buy one of these GPS tracked boxes, you're a "winner" and Unilever agents then show up at your door with a video camera crew and a prize. This new detergent marketing contest was detailed in an Ad Age article called Is Your Detergent Stalking You? (http://adage.com/globalnews/article...)

That article explains that Unilever "...has teams in 35 Brazilian cities ready to leap into action when a box is activated. The nearest team can reach the shopper's home 'within hours or days,' and if they're really close by, 'they may get to your house as soon as you do.'"

This creepy "Big Brother" marketing idea is apparently exactly the kind of thing the Unilever company approves of: Spying on your customers. Unilever, by the way, is the parent company that brings you brands like Lipton tea, Skippy peanut butter, Axe cologne, and the infamous Slim-Fast sugar drink that's somehow positioned as a "weight loss" product.

Google, CIA Invest in ‘Future’ of Web Monitoring

2010-09-06T09:32:00.002+01:00

The Danger Room blog has more information on the 'predicted future' software that Google and Pentagon interests are investing in:

The investment arms of the CIA and Google are both backing a company that monitors the web in real time — and says it uses that information to predict the future.

The company is called Recorded Future, and it scours tens of thousands of websites, blogs and Twitter accounts to find the relationships between people, organizations, actions and incidents — both present and still-to-come. In a white paper, the company says its temporal analytics engine “goes beyond search” by “looking at the ‘invisible links’ between documents that talk about the same, or related, entities and events.”
The idea is to figure out for each incident who was involved, where it happened and when it might go down. Recorded Future then plots that chatter, showing online “momentum” for any given event.

“The cool thing is, you can actually predict the curve, in many cases,” says company CEO Christopher Ahlberg, a former Swedish Army Ranger with a PhD in computer science.

Which naturally makes the 16-person Cambridge, Massachusetts, firm attractive to Google Ventures, the search giant’s investment division, and to In-Q-Tel, which handles similar duties for the CIA and the wider intelligence community.

It’s not the very first time Google has done business with America’s spy agencies. Long before it reportedly enlisted the help of the National Security Agency to secure its networks, Google sold equipment to the secret signals-intelligence group. In-Q-Tel backed the mapping firm Keyhole, which was bought by Google in 2004 — and then became the backbone for Google Earth.

Read more at - 'Google, CIA Invest in ‘Future’ of Web Monitoring'

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Mind-controlled app calls your friends with the power of thought

2010-09-03T09:30:00.002+01:00

A new app for the Nokia N900’s Maemo platform has emerged that claims to be able to dial a contact using only the power of thought:

ThinkContacts is designed to allow a “Motor disabled person to make a phone call to a desired contact by himself/herself”. Requiring a special headset to read users’ brainwaves, it uses brain activity to determine which of three contacts on the screen the user wants to call.

While the app is looking quite basic at present, the project’s wiki at Forum Nokia only opened six days ago meaning this is likely to be an early-stage project. The wiki describes how the app works:
“The user controls the selection of the desired contact by controlling his/her level of meditation and attention. If the user’s level of attention is higher than 70% the software switches to the next contact in the list, if it is lower than 30% the software switches to the previous, otherwise the current contact will not be switched. If the user’s meditation level is higher than 80%, the software makes a phone call to the contact located at the center of the screen.”

Mind-reading marketers have ways of making you buy

2010-09-01T09:26:00.002+01:00

New Scientist has an intriguing post on the power of neuromarketing....which is coming to a magazine cover near you!

TAKE A look at the cover of this week's New Scientist magazine (right). Notice anything unusual? Thought not, but behind the scenes your brain is working overtime, focusing your attention on the words and images and cranking up your emotions and memory. How do we know? Because we tested it with a brain scanner.

In what we suspect is a world first, this week's cover was created with the help of a technique called neuromarketing, a marriage of market research and neuroscience that uses brain-imaging technology to peek into people's heads and discover what they really want. You may find that sinister. What right does anyone have to try to read your mind? Or perhaps you are sceptical and consider the idea laughable. But ...

Read more at - 'Mind-reading marketers have ways of making you buy'

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Solar Roadways

2010-08-30T09:20:00.002+01:00

Here's a great idea...and what which makes us ask: 'why didn't we think of this before?!'

The Solar Roadways company has made a section of road from the material that airline black boxes are made of and, in it, housed solar cells to collect energy, thereby creating a road that would pay for itself over time. They then said, "What if we added LEDs to "paint" the road lines from beneath, lighting up the road for safer night time driving? What if we added a heating element in the surface like the defrosting wire in the rear window of cars to prevent snow/ice accumulation in northern climates?" In 2009, the company received a contract from the Federal Highway Administration to build the first ever Solar Road Panel prototype.

On the Web's Cutting Edge, Anonymity in Name Only

2010-08-27T09:17:00.000+01:00

Websites are now gaining the ability to decide whether or not you'd be a good customer, before you tell them a single thing about yourself. And this technology reaches beyond the personalization we are presently familiar with:

You may not know a company called [x+1] Inc., but it may well know a lot about you.

From a single click on a web site, [x+1] correctly identified Carrie Isaac as a young Colorado Springs parent who lives on about $50,000 a year, shops at Wal-Mart and rents kids' videos. The company deduced that Paul Boulifard, a Nashville architect, is childless, likes to travel and buys used cars. And [x+1] determined that Thomas Burney, a Colorado building contractor, is a skier with a college degree and looks like he has good credit.

The company didn't get every detail correct. But its ability to make snap assessments of individuals is accurate enough that Capital One Financial Corp. uses [x+1]'s calculations to instantly decide which credit cards to show first-time visitors to its website.

Read more at - 'On the Web's Cutting Edge, Anonymity in Name Only'

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Bill Gates: In Five Years The Best Education Will Come From The Web

2010-08-25T09:09:00.000+01:00

A recent announcement from Bill Gates has the future of our education on the Net - without the plagiarising that is!

“Five years from now on the web for free you’ll be able to find the best lectures in the world,” Gates said at the Techonomy conference in Lake Tahoe, CA today. “It will be better than any single university,” he continued.

He believes that no matter how you came about your knowledge, you should get credit for it. Whether it’s an MIT degree or if you got everything you know from lectures on the web, there needs to be a way to highlight that.

He made sure to say that educational institutions are still vital for children, K-12. He spoke glowingly about charter schools, where kids can spend up to 80% of their time deeply engaged with learning.

But college needs to be less “place-based,” according to Gates. Well, except for the parties, he joked.

But his overall point is that it’s just too expensive and too hard to get these upper-level educations. And soon place-based college educations will be five times less important than they are today.

Indian HR Ministry brings $35 low cost computing device to reality

2010-08-23T09:05:00.000+01:00

It's been reported that India has succeeded in delivering the lowest-cost computing device - which might even drop to as low as $10 per unit!

Finally a low-cost computing-cum-access device has been unveiled by HRD minister Shri. Kapil Sibal. The price is this device is expected to be around $35. However, HR ministry is aiming at bringing down the cost of this device to $20 and ultimately to $10. IIT’s and other Technical Institutions are setting up research teams to cover wide range of issues and capability enhancements to achieve the ultimate goal of bringing down the the cost of this device to $10.

I, personally am quite proud to see this happen, and I will tell you the reason why – While the private entities and corporates had given up on this idea, professors and experts from IISc & IIT’s went ahead and devised this concept. While B.tech & M.Tech students were guided to produce the motherboard and other key components.

Even though this device has been unveiled today, the development & research is currently on-going on at various different levels connected with HR Ministry. The ministry is quite confident of bringing down the cost of this device further.

Ultimately the goal of such devices is to spread education in Rural India, by offering such devices with educational courses / materials embedded inside them.

A hidden world, growing beyond control

2010-08-20T08:59:00.000+01:00

An extensive investigative report over at The Washington Post has done a terrific job of highlighting the faults of an over-extensive surveillance world that has come into being in the last decade. A worthy read indeed!

The top-secret world the government created in response to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, has become so large, so unwieldy and so secretive that no one knows how much money it costs, how many people it employs, how many programs exist within it or exactly how many agencies do the same work. These are some of the findings of a two-year investigation by The Washington Post that discovered what amounts to an alternative geography of the United States, a Top Secret America hidden from public view and lacking in thorough oversight. After nine years of unprecedented spending and growth, the result is that the system put in place to keep the United States safe is so massive that its effectiveness is impossible to determine

These are some of the findings of a two-year investigation by The Washington Post that discovered what amounts to an alternative geography of the United States, a Top Secret America hidden from public view and lacking in thorough oversight. After nine years of unprecedented spending and growth, the result is that the system put in place to keep the United States safe is so massive that its effectiveness is impossible to determine.

The investigation's other findings include:

* Some 1,271 government organizations and 1,931 private companies work on programs related to counterterrorism, homeland security and intelligence in about 10,000 locations across the United States.
* An estimated 854,000 people, nearly 1.5 times as many people as live in Washington, D.C., hold top-secret security clearances.
* In Washington and the surrounding area, 33 building complexes for top-secret intelligence work are under construction or have been built since September 2001. Together they occupy the equivalent of almost three Pentagons or 22 U.S. Capitol buildings - about 17 million square feet of space.

Read the full article at - 'A hidden world, growing beyond control'

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Twitter user sends world's 20 billionth tweet

2010-08-13T09:54:00.000+01:00

It doesn't sound like an important communication - GGGGGo_Lets_Go .......yet it has become a landmark text...or rather a 'twitter'.....as the social network site Twitter has just had its 20 billionth message posted:

The landmark and rather opaque tweet was sent at 1544 GMT Saturday by GGGGGGo_Lets_Go, a Tokyo graphic designer for an advertising agency. It said: "So that means the barrage might come back later all at once."

Twitter took four years to reach its 10 billionth tweet, in March this year, and less than five months to double it. GGGGGGo_Lets_Go was inundated with congratulatory messages from around the world for hitting the milestone with a tweet which appeared to have been part of a longer conversation with another user.

He later posted another message, saying: "Looks like I posted the 20 billionth tweet. I'm getting replies from people all over the world. It's scary. What are the chances? Maybe I'm going to die.

"Is it more amazing than winning the lottery? I thought it was a joke."

Read more at - 'Twitter user sends world's 20 billionth tweet'

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London saddles up for new bike hire scheme

2010-08-11T09:46:00.000+01:00

Finally! A bike hire scheme designed to encourage thousands more cycle journeys in central London has begun...and it's had a great response:

So far, more than 12,000 people have signed up to the idea, far outstripping the 5,000 bicycles which will be available at special docking stations. Transport for London (TfL) has admitted it had been expecting "teething problems".

But it insisted that although members outnumbered the number of bikes, people would not face a shortage.

Already, more than 12,450 keys have been handed out to Londoners enabling them to unlock bikes left at 315 docking points across the city.

The keys cost £3 and the cost of using the cycles varies from £1 for an hour to £50 for 24 hours. TfL and operator Serco expect to roll out the scheme to casual users after a month.

About 12,000 people had signed up to the scheme - with some asking for more than one key.

But only 6,000 keys had been activated. Until they are activated, cyclists will not be able to withdraw the bikes from docking stations.

Read more at - 'London saddles up for new bike hire scheme'

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Who (Re)Built the Electric Car?

2010-08-09T09:12:00.001+01:00

Here's news of an interesting electric car project: it's called the 'ChargeCar' and the project is led by the Carnegie Mellon University associate professor and colleagues Gregg Podnar and Ben Brown...it's all about the battery folks!:

ChargeCar is based at the Electric Garage -- appropriately enough, a repurposed former Exxon station on Forbes Avenue, near CMU's campus. On a rainy July afternoon, Nourbakhsh backs the car from a service bay. Motoring up rain-slick Forbes in rush-hour traffic, then through campus into Schenley Park, Nourbakhsh demonstrates various ChargeCar features.

It has "regenerative braking," to capture energy conventional cars lose when you hit the brakes. It's dead quiet, except for the hissing of tires on asphalt and the whirring of a brake pump. And though this prototype's top speed is just 45 mph, the fixed-gear ChargeCar accelerates well, easily beating other vehicles off the line as a traffic light turns green...

...ChargeCars wouldn't meet all our transportation needs, of course, or solve all our car-related problems. Like all electric cars, they'd take longer to "refuel" than a gas tank -- a couple hours plugged in to get any range at all, and overnight for a full charge. But even if people kept second cars (which most households have anyway) for long trips, or used rentals, we'd have air a bit cleaner, streets a bit quieter. And we'd have less need of the stuff that's been spewing from a hole in the Gulf of Mexico.

Read more at - 'Who (Re)Built the Electric Car?'

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Emails and phones snooped on by authorities every minute

2010-08-06T09:26:00.000+01:00

Yet more proof of our UK surveillance nation...now we see that political and corporate bodies are racing after our private information:

Councils, police and other public bodies are demanding access to people's private telephone and email records at a rate of once a minute after a rise in snooping applications.

Public authorities asked for confidential communications data on more than 525,000 occasions last year including a 13 per cent increase in requests by town halls.There were also errors in hundreds of applications leading to wrong phone numbers, emails or innocent people being monitored, according to the surveillance watchdog.

Sir Paul Kennedy, the interception of communications commissioner, also warned children and other members of the public could be at risk because of "very serious weaknesses and failing" in the way communications in prisons are monitored.He said flaws or attempts to monitor too much could place the public, as well as other prisoners and staff, in harm's way.

The figures will fuel concerns over the use of interception powers by some public bodies under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act, which are mainly aimed at tackling terrorism and serious crime.The Act gives authorities – including councils, the police and intelligence agencies – the power to request access to confidential communications data, including lists of telephone numbers dialled and email addresses to which messages have been sent but not their content.

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Drivers to get £5,000 electric car subsidy

2010-08-04T09:23:00.000+01:00

This post from The Telegraph explains how now UK drivers will get up to £5,000 from the Government if they buy an electric car - but the number of grants has been sharply cut from earlier plans:

The subsidy was announced by the Labour government in 2009 but placed on hold by the Coalition until the autumn spending review. From January, any motorist buying a new generation electric car, or ultra-low carbon hybrid, will get 25 per cent off, up to a maximum £5,000.

However, the number of grants has been slashed from a minimum of 46,000 to as few as 8,600. The scheme has been partially ring-fenced from cuts following pressure from car makers and Britain’s green energy industry.The grants will be available just in time for the UK launch of the Nissan Leaf, the first major rival to the globally successful Toyota Prius.

A full grant would cut the cost of a new Leaf from £28,350 to £23,350, according to a report in The Sun.
Once charged, the cars run for about 70 miles, costing just 3p a mile.Nissan’s Sunderland factory assembles the Leaf, meaning Britain is the company’s third-biggest global electric car base. Nissan itself received grants from the Government to build the Leaf in Sunderland, where the workforce of 4,100 built 338,000 Qashqai, Note and Micra models in 2008.

Read post at - 'Drivers to get £5,000 electric car subsidy'

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Mobile phones 'dirtier than toilet handles'

2010-08-02T09:19:00.000+01:00

New research suggests that mobile phones are covered with up to 18 times more living bacteria than the flush handle on a men's lavatory...now, that's sexist! Anyway, here's what is said:

Swabs and analysis of 30 mobile handsets found that seven had high or warning levels of environmental bacteria, according to consumer group Which? One contained such an intense concentration of bacteria, including faecal coliforms, that anyone using it could have faced a serious stomach upset.

Which? said the findings suggest millions of UK mobiles would exceed the recommended acceptable levels of bacteria. While not immediately harmful, elevated levels of bacteria indicate poor hygiene and can act as a breeding ground for more serious germs.Hygiene expert Jim Francis told Which?: "The levels of potentially harmful bacteria on one mobile were off the scale. That phone needs sterilising."

The tests showed how easily bacteria could linger on the surface of a phone, which could be passed on to other people if they held the handset to look at photos or other applications.

Which? advises that phones can be cleaned with an alcohol wipe.

Read original post at - 'Mobile phones 'dirtier than toilet handles''

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Intelligent cars will report accidents to authorities

2010-07-28T08:53:00.000+01:00

The UK's Telegraph paper has a report on how computer scientists are developing intelligent cars fitted with aircraft-style black boxes that can send video footage and information about driving behaviour during accidents to the police and insurance companies:

An electrical car with Intel Connected Car applications sits on display at the Intel Research Day in Mountain View, California Photo: KIM WHITE

The car, which is being developed by researchers at computer chip giant Intel, will record information about the vehicle speed, steering and braking along with video footage from inside and outside the vehicle.

This would be automatically sent to police and insurance companies in the event of an accident to make it easier to determine the cause of car crashes and identify the person responsible.

The device forms part of an intelligent car envisaged by researchers at computer chip giant Intel. They are developing technology that will transform cars into smart vehicles that are able to detect dangers on the road and even take over control from motorists. They have been in discussions with car manufacturers about developing cars that are permanently connected to the internet and other vehicles using wireless technology.
Camera systems that can recognise street signs and then take over control of a car if the motorist tries to drive the wrong way up a one-way street, for example, are being developed for use in vehicles.

On board sensors will also be able to detect pot holes in the road and report their location to road maintenance authorities as the car is moving.

Now Scientists Read Your Mind Better Than You Can

2010-07-26T10:57:00.000+01:00

Here we are again - back at the brain-reading mode of technology: the advertisers just can't wait to get further into our heads!!

Brain scans may be able to predict what you will do better than you can yourself, and might offer a powerful tool for advertisers or health officials seeking to motivate consumers, researchers said on Tuesday. They found a way to interpret "real time" brain images to show whether people who viewed messages about using sunscreen would actually use sunscreen during the following week. The scans were more accurate than the volunteers were, Emily Falk and colleagues at UCLA reported. People were right about themselves just half the time; based on brain scans, the researchers predicted 75% of behavior correctly.

Read more over at - 'Now Scientists Read Your Mind Better Than You Can'

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World's Most Advanced Electric Motorcycle

2010-07-23T10:53:00.002+01:00

Here's some latest news on the 'drive' towards better and more efficient EV machines... this one's quite a burner!!

This is the 2010 MotoCzysz E1pc, a race bike built by a tiny Oregonian company focused on pushing the limits of electric performance to the absolute max. It packs 10 times the battery capacity of a Toyota Prius and 2.5 times the torque of a Ducati 1198 into a package that looks like something out of a 24th-century Thunderdome.

Tomorrow it will race in the Isle of Man TT, the toughest motorcycle race in the world. The technology at work is so advanced, so unprecedented, that we may be looking not just at the future of motorcycles, but of all electric vehicles.

The reason the all-electric race bike is here, 4,600 miles from its home in Portland, Oregon, is to prove itself. Ever since 1907, the Isle of Man TT has been the race for bike manufacturers and riders to show their mettle to the public. The thinking goes that if you can lap its 37.7 miles of tiny, twisty back roads with an average speed in excess of 100 MPH, you or your bike become indisputably proven. Well over 200 riders and a handful of spectator’s have been killed trying to do just that.

Read more at - World's Most Advanced Electric Motorcycle

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Power from thin air

2010-07-21T10:48:00.000+01:00

Well, Tesla is never far away from modern communications...and his wireless technology has been trying to emerge into markets for quite some time now... here's some latest news on this:

A little over a century ago, the inventor Nikola Tesla drew up ambitious plans to transmit electrical power without wires. He carried out a series of experiments in which electric lights were illuminated via electrostatic induction, by connecting them to metal sheets suspended in a strong electric field produced by a distant transmitter. In 1898 he proposed a “world system” of giant towers that would form both a global wireless communications network and a means of delivering electricity over large areas without wires.

The construction of the first such tower, the Wardenclyffe Tower, on Long Island, began in 1901. Tesla’s backers included the financier J.P. Morgan, who invested $150,000. But before the tower was completed, Morgan and the other backers pulled out. They worried that the delivery of electricity through the air could not be metered, and there would be nothing to stop people from helping themselves.

But has Tesla had the last laugh after all? Today several firms—including Fulton Innovation, eCoupled, WiTricity and Powercast—are pursuing various technologies that deliver electrical power without wires (though over shorter distances than Tesla had in mind). WiTricity has demonstrated the ability to send enough energy across a room to run a flat-screen television using its approach, called “resonant magnetic coupling”. This is different from Tesla’s approach, but the firm’s founders have acknowledged his pioneering work.

San Francisco passes cell phone radiation law

2010-07-19T10:41:00.000+01:00

Now here's good news for people worried about mobile phone radiation and its potential harmful affects - San Francisco has become the first city in the US to require mobile phone retailers to post radiation levels next to the handsets they sell. Yet will it really change the industry, or just appease in the short-term?

The board of supervisors, or council, voted 10-1 to approve the measure."This is about helping people make informed choices," said the law's chief sponsor, Supervisor Sophie Maxwell.The mobile phone industry has pointed to studies that it says show mobile phone radiation was not harmful to people.

It has fought similar legislation in California and Maine, and defeated the bills in both states.The Federal Communications Commission has adopted limits that set out safe exposure to these kinds of emissions.
The measurement defines the amount of radio waves that people can safely absorb into their bodies when talking on a mobile phone.

Some researchers have claimed such emissions can be linked to cancer and brain tumours but there remains little scientific consensus on the matter."This is not about discouraging people from using their cell phones," said Tony Winnicker, spokesman for San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom, who has said he will sign the legislation into law.

Read original post - 'San Francisco passes cell phone radiation law'

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Surveillance system monitors conversations

2010-07-16T10:38:00.000+01:00

An intrusive surveiilance system has been trialled in the UK without, until now, the public knowing of it - nothing new there...except that this system has a way of intruding into your street conversations:

The technology, called Sigard, monitors movements and speech to detect signs of threatening behaviour.

Its designers claim the system can anticipate anti-social behaviour and violence by analysing the information picked up its sensors.

They say alerts are then sent to police, nightclub bouncers or shop security staff, which allow them to nip trouble in the bud before arguments spiral into violence.The devices are designed to distinguish between distress calls, threatening behaviour and general shouting. The system, produced by Sound Intelligence, is being used in Dutch prisons, city centres and Amsterdam's Central Rail Station.

Coventry City Council is funding a pilot project which has for six months and has installed seven devices in the nightlife area on the High Street. Dylan Sharpe, from Big Brother Watch, said: "There can be no justification for giving councils or the police the capability to listen in on private conversations."There is enormous potential for abuse, or a misheard word, causing unnecessary harm with this sort of intrusive and overbearing surveillance."

Read more at - 'Surveillance system monitors conversations'

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Charging motorists per mile 'inevitable'

2010-07-14T09:45:00.001+01:00

The issue of pay-as-you-drive motoring has been put back in the spotlight with this report from the RAC which considers the outcome as 'inevitable':

Charging motorists for each mile they travel is "inevitable" if future traffic gridlock is to be avoided, a report from the RAC Foundation said today.A "pay-as-you-go" system could be the answer to congestion, said the report from the foundation's director Professor Stephen Glaister.

What was needed was a fundamental shift in the way England's roads were managed and paid for, he said.
The launch of the report coincided with an Ipsos Mori report for the RAC Foundation which showed that 58% of drivers agreed that a per-mile, pay-as-you-go system across all roads would make them think about how much they drive.

Prof Glaister's report identified a series of problems facing road users and governments in the future.
These included a lack of vision for the road network, a 33% increase in traffic by 2025 and reduced spending on road infrastructure because of financial and political constraints.He said a system of charging motorists per mile travelled had to come with:
:: A cut in fuel duty and road tax;
:: A governing body to develop and implement a long-term strategy for maintaining and enhancing the road network;
:: A guaranteed sum of revenue put aside to pay for the work and a regulator to ensure the work was done efficiently;

:: More reliable journey times and compensation for delays.

Read original post - 'Charging motorists per mile 'inevitable' says RAC'

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Car for blind drivers under development

2010-07-12T08:11:00.000+01:00

The UK Telegraph has a post on how researchers think they will have a car on the road next year that can be driven by blind people. Although it uses nonvisual interfaces you have to ask yourself - would this be suitable for fast-reaction driving in such cities as London, New York, Istanbul, etc?? It's one thing to have developed the technology, its quite another to put it into real-time practice in some of the most difficult circumstances. Read on:

The National Federation of the Blind and Virginia Tech say they hope to demonstrate a prototype equipped with technology that helps a sightless person to get behind the wheel in 2011.The technology, called nonvisual interfaces, will guide its driver through traffic by transmitting information about nearby vehicles or objects.

Vibrating gloves or streams of compressed air directed behind the wheel are among the options for communicating the information needed to avoid collisions and reach a destination.Advocates for the blind describe the scheme as a "moon shot," drawing parallels with President John F. Kennedy's pledge to land a man on the moon."We're exploring areas that have previously been regarded as unexplorable," said Dr. Mark Maurer, president of the National Federation of the Blind. "We're moving away from the theory that blindness ends the capacity of human beings to make contributions to society."

Mr Maurer first came up with the idea that the blind could drive about a decade ago when he launched the organisation's research institute. "Some people thought I was crazy, and they thought, 'Why do you want us to raise money for something that can't be done?' Others thought it was a great idea," Mr Maurer said. "Some people were incredulous. Others thought the idea was incredible."

Read original post at - 'Car for blind drivers under development'

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Yike Bike!

2010-07-09T10:32:00.000+01:00

Crikes, yikes - it's cool! It's the new design-gadget Yike Bike...the world's first super light electric folding bike (according to Yike, of course...). It's a must see bike design - go to their webpage below to see the pics... they say that:

The world's most lightweight electric bike folds down into something the size of a backpack. Its designers wanted to create something that could dramatically change urban transport, enabling city dwellers a fast, safe and easy way to navigate their environment. You might not wish to ride it to work on snowy days, but for elegant design...

See the Yikebike homepage

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Big Changes in Online News Consumption

2010-07-07T10:29:00.000+01:00

Gather, the leading demand-driven media company, today released results of a survey conducted to understand how 'people are consuming news and engaging around breaking news stories. More than 1,450 individuals of various ages, backgrounds and political affiliations answered questions about how they get news, how they respond to breaking news stories, and where, and if, they share and discuss news online'. Further,

Nearly half (49%) of all adults consider the internet their primary source for news, there is a shift in what people are doing with that news - nearly 80% of adults ages 18+ are actively sharing news stories online. However, the manner in which people share news online varies greatly based on their age - while 68% of those aged 45 and older share news primarily via email, 54% of those under the age of 45 share news primarily via Facebook, and a full 90% of respondents 24 years and younger use Twitter and Facebook to share news (double the respondents 40+).

Read more at 'Big Changes in Online News Consumption'

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Radiation risks cited in full-body airport scans

2010-07-05T10:26:00.000+01:00

More controversy surrounding the use of full-body airport security scanners. This recent post explains how

Full-body airport security scanners manufactured by Rapiscan Inc. expose the skin to high radiation levels that may lead to cancer and other health problems, according to researchers from the University of California, San Francisco. Particularly at risk, the researchers said, are travelers who are pregnant, elderly or have weakened immune systems. The machines emit X-ray energy levels that would be safe if they were distributed throughout the body, but a majority of that energy is delivered to the skin and underlying tissue at levels that "may be dangerously high," the researchers wrote last month to the White House Office of Science and Technology. Officials with the Department of Homeland Security defended the use of Rapiscan's backscatter machines. The amount of energy emitted from the machines is equal to two minutes in flight at cruising altitude, said Dr. Alex Garza, chief medical officer for the Department of Homeland Security.

Read original post - 'Radiation risks cited in full-body airport scans'

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'Imaginary' Interface Could Replace Screens and Keyboards

2010-07-02T10:24:00.000+01:00

TechNewsDaily has a recent post discussing how researchers are experimenting with a new interface system for mobile devices that could replace the screen and even the keyboard with gestures supported by our visual memory:

Called Imaginary Interfaces, the German project uses a small, chest-mounted computer and camera to detect hand movements. Unlike Tony Stark in Iron Man, who manipulates holographic elements in his lab with his hands, users conjure up their own imaginary set of graphical interfaces. For example, people can manually draw shapes and select points in space that have programmed functions, such as a power switch or a "send" key, for example.

This interface could allow people to use gestures during phone calls, much as they do in face-to-face conversations, while eliminating traditional hardware elements.

"We definitely envision a system like this replacing all input for mobile devices," said Sean Gustafson, a research student at the Hasso Plattner Institute at Potsdam University in Germany and lead author of an upcoming study on the Imaginary Interfaces concept.

Post-PC era is nigh

2010-06-30T10:21:00.000+01:00

CNet News has a post on a D8 conference where Steve Jobs was talking about the post-PC era:

Jobs said the day is coming when only one out of every few people will need a traditional computer. He noted that advances in chips and software will allow tablet devices like the iPad to do tasks that today are really only suited for a traditional computer, things like video editing and graphic arts work. The move, Jobs said, will make many PC veterans uneasy, "because the PC has taken us a long ways." "We like to talk about the post-PC era, but when it really starts to happen, it's uncomfortable," he said.

Read original post - 'Post-PC era is nigh'

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The Coming Data Explosion

2010-06-28T10:17:00.000+01:00

The New York Times has an interesting post on the emerging 'Internet of Things' and the ever-increasing number of real-world objects connected/interfaced with the digital world:

One of the key aspects of the emerging Internet of Things - where real-world objects are connected to the Internet - is the massive amount of new data on the Web that will result. As more and more "things" in the world are connected to the Internet, it follows that more data will be uploaded to and downloaded from the cloud. And this is in addition to the burgeoning amount of user-generated content - which has increased 15-fold over the past few years, according to a presentation that Google VP Marissa Mayer made last August at Xerox PARC. Mayer said during her presentation that this "data explosion is bigger than Moore's law."

Read more at 'The Coming Data Explosion'

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Sony Shows Rollable OLED Display

2010-06-25T10:04:00.000+01:00

Has the Sony company pulled off another hit? A colour display that can even wrap around a pen...uummm

Sony has developed a flexible color display that's sturdy enough to be wrapped around a pencil while still showing video images. The screen will be detailed on Thursday at the Society for Information Display conference in Seattle and ahead of that Sony released a video of it in operation.

Read more at - 'Sony Shows Rollable OLED Display'

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Wikitude Drive Beta – Test Drivers Wanted

2010-06-23T10:01:00.000+01:00

Is this the future for satellite navigation, one wonders? Live video stream of the road you are driving on...road testers required - sign up!

Wikitude Drive, the first mobile Augmented Reality (AR) satellite navigation system with global coverage, launches for test drivers.

Salzburg, May 20, 2010. Wikitude Drive, the Grand Prize Winner of the Global Navteq LBS Challenge 2010 at Mobile World Congress last February in Barcelona, transforms your Android smartphone into a mobile navigation system looking a bit like something out of a science fiction movie…
Driving directions not only appear on screen, they are overlaid on the live video stream of the very street you are driving on. As a result, you are seeing the real world and real road in front of you, while being directed by a digital route on top of it.

Read more at - 'Wikitude Drive Beta – Test Drivers Wanted'

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YeZ concept car sucks in C02, exhales oxygen

2010-06-21T10:46:00.000+01:00

Now this does look cool... conceptual... but way smart..

Here is a vehicle that behaves like a plant, photosynthesizing carbon dioxide from the air and exchanging oxygen back into the atmosphere. Meet the YeZ, a concept two-seater that makes other eco cars blush when it comes to zero and even negative emissions. Shanghai Automotive Industry Corporation is behind this clever little creation in partnership with General Motors and Volkswagen. YeZ, pronounced yea-zi, which means "leaf" in Mandarin, works its magic of photoelectric conversion with the help of state-of-the-art solar panels on the roof, wind power conversion via small wind turbines in the wheels, and carbon dioxide absorption and conversion through the bodywork. This last bit is made of a metal-organic framework that can apparently absorb carbon dioxide and water molecules from the air. Through the series of chemical reactions, energy is generated, and it's then stored in the car's lithium ion batteries.

Read move over at 'YeZ concept car sucks in C02, exhales oxygen'

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Tweet for Traitors

2010-06-18T10:24:00.000+01:00

Yet again Twitter hits the headlines as it becomes a tool for pro-Chavez supporters to whistleblow:

President Hugo Chavez has urged supporters to use Twitter to blow the whistle on currency speculators and announced that police raids on illegal traders would continue as Venezuela's government tries to defend the embattled bolivar. The socialist leader asked Venezuelans to send messages identifying illegal traders. He described them as "thieves" who must be punished for currency speculation, which he blames for rapidly rising inflation. "My Twitter account is open for you to denounce them," Chavez said during his weekly radio and television program. "We're going to launch several raids. We've already launched some raids, thanks to the complaints from the people."

Read more at - 'Chavez asks Venezuelans to tweet on speculators'

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Theory, Culture & Society - Special Issue on Changing Climates‏

2010-06-16T16:21:00.000+01:00

I've recently been shifting through a few articles in the new Theory, Culture & Society ( March/May 2010, Volume 27, No. 2-3) titled Special Issue on Changing Climates - Edited by Bronislaw Szerszynski and John Urry - see http://tcs.sagepub.com/current.dtl

Some great content here... see the following:

CONTENTS

Bronislaw Szerszynski and John Urry
    Changing Climates: Introduction
    Theory, Culture & Society 2010 27: 1-8.

Bronislaw Szerszynski
    Reading and Writing the Weather: Climate Technics and the Moment of Responsibility
    Theory, Culture & Society 2010 27: 9-30.

Nigel Clark
    Volatile Worlds, Vulnerable Bodies: Confronting Abrupt Climate Change
    Theory, Culture & Society 2010 27: 31-53.

Myra J. Hird
    Indifferent Globality: Gaia, Symbiosis and ‘Other Worldliness’
    Theory, Culture & Society 2010 27: 54-72.

Kathryn Yusoff
    Biopolitical Economies and the Political Aesthetics of Climate Change
    Theory, Culture & Society 2010 27: 73-99.

Aaron M. McCright and Riley E. Dunlap
    Anti-reflexivity: The American Conservative Movement’s Success in Undermining Climate Science and Policy
    Theory, Culture & Society 2010 27: 100-133.

Bradley C. Parks and J. Timmons Roberts
    Climate Change, Social Theory and Justice
    Theory, Culture & Society 2010 27: 134-166.

Melinda Cooper
    Turbulent Worlds: Financial Markets and Environmental Crisis
    Theory, Culture & Society 2010 27: 167-190.
John Urry
    Consuming the Planet to Excess
    Theory, Culture & Society 2010 27: 191-212.

Erik Swyngedouw
    Apocalypse Forever?: Post-political Populism and the Spectre of Climate Change
    Theory, Culture & Society 2010 27: 213-232.

Sheila Jasanoff
    A New Climate for Society
    Theory, Culture & Society 2010 27: 233-253.

Ulrich Beck
    Climate for Change, or How to Create a Green Modernity?
    Theory, Culture & Society 2010 27: 254-266.

Mike Hulme
    Cosmopolitan Climates: Hybridity, Foresight and Meaning
    Theory, Culture & Society 2010 27: 267-276.

Elizabeth Shov
    Social Theory and Climate Change: Questions Often, Sometimes and Not Yet Asked
    Theory, Culture & Society 2010 27: 277-288.

Brian Wynne
    Strange Weather, Again: Climate Science as Political Art
    Theory, Culture & Society 2010 27: 289-305.

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Google Invests in Firm that Tries to Predict the Future

2010-06-14T16:20:00.000+01:00

Google's investment arm, Google Ventures, has sunk an undisclosed sum into Recorded Future, a Cambridge, Massachusetts-based startup that "offers customers new ways to analyze the past, present and the predicted future.":

Recorded Future's own Web site doesn't list any products for sale, but the company appears to have developed a data analytics technology that could be used to try to predict future stock market events or even terrorist activity, according to blog posts and videos on its site. The technology looks at how frequently an entity or event is referred to in the news and around the Web over a period of time, then uses that data to project how it might behave in the future.

Bristol psychologist seeking tweets about dreams

2010-06-09T09:02:00.000+01:00

This has to be the new level in Tweet-related phenomena! A Bristol academic is to take part in a worldwide experiment to collect and analyse people's dreams using the social networking service Twitter:

Dr Jennifer Parker, of the University of the West of England, is asking people from around the world to tweet their dreams to her on Monday.

The 10 judged the best will be analysed by Dr Parker, who is a member of the Association for the Study of Dreams. The top 10 tweeted dreams will appear on www.twitter.com/dreamshrink.They will be posted on Friday 30 April.

Dr Parker, who is from the university's psychology department, said even the dreams that will not be analysed publicly will help her with her research.

Read more at 'Bristol psychologist seeking tweets about dreams'

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Cell phones to 'smell' biochem attack?

2010-06-07T09:49:00.000+01:00

I remember coving this topic about 2 years ago...seems like it's been taking a while to move on this. Anyway, its implications are both 'reassuring' and yet 'worrying' - hopefully, you won't need to ask why!

If you ever get caught up in a chemical or biological weapons attack, your cellphone may save your life. Or at least that's the ambition of the Department of Homeland Security. The Department's science and technology team has begun talks with four cell-phone manufacturers on designing 'nextgen' phones that would be able to sense a wide variety of noxious chemical compounds in the air - and alert the user. The director of the "Cell-All" program at the DHS, Stephen Dennis, tells CNN that within a year, "We expect up to 80 prototype cell phones to be developed that can be then tested against various agents."

Read original post - 'Cell phones to 'smell' biochem attack?'

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Car Steered With Eyes

2010-06-04T09:43:00.000+01:00

Following on from the previous post on the automated car being closer to reality, this is a slightly different take - using the power of 'giving the eye'!

The eyeDriver software is a prototype application for steering the research vehicle Spirit of Berlin using eye movements. The software was designed by computer scientists at Freie Universität Berlin in collaboration with the company, SMI (SensoMotoric Instruments). The eye movements of the driver are collected and converted into control signals for the steering wheel. The application uses a converted bicycle helmet equipped with two cameras and an infrared LED, as well as a laptop computer with special software. One of the cameras is pointed to the front in the same direction as the person wearing the helmet (scene camera), while the other camera films one eye of the wearer (eye camera)...

In the "free ride" mode the viewing positions are linked directly with the steering wheel motor. That means that the x-coordinates of the viewing position are used to calculate the desired position of the steering wheel. The further the driver looks to the left or right, the further the steering wheel is turned in that direction. The speed of the vehicle is set in advance and kept constant, as long as the position of the gaze is recognized. In case it is not possible to detect which direction the driver is looking in, for example, if the driver's eyes are closed, the vehicle brakes automatically.

Car that drives itself gets closer to reality

2010-06-02T09:40:00.000+01:00

It's getting a closer reality: cars that can stay in a motorway lane without the help of a human driver...read the latest developments:

Software developed by the researchers at North Carolina State University helps a computer keep a car within a lane on a highway while staying aware of other lanes and vehicles travelling alongside. It can even read road signs. The technology relies completely on computer vision programming, which allows a computer to understand what a video camera is looking at - whether it is a stop sign or a pedestrian. The program uses algorithms to sort visual data and make decisions related to finding the lanes of a road, detecting how those lanes change as a car is moving, and controlling the car to stay in the correct lane. It does this - while avoiding other vehicles and without becoming confused by multiple lanes.

Read original post - 'Car that drives itself gets closer to reality'

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Networked Networks Are Prone to Epic Failure

2010-05-31T09:35:00.000+01:00

A recent post from Wired takes a complexity look at the fragility of networks which are inter-related and thus increase their fragility.... a useful post:

Networks that are resilient on their own become fragile and prone to catastrophic failure when connected, suggests a new study with troubling implications for tightly linked modern infrastructures. Electrical grids, water supplies, computer networks, roads, hospitals, financial systems - all are tied to each other in ways that could make them vulnerable. Most theoretical research on network properties has focused on single networks in isolation. In reality, many important networks are tied to each other. Anecdotal evidence hints at their fragility, but the underlying mathematics are largely unexplored.

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Word War III: Google vs. Governments

2010-05-28T09:26:00.000+01:00

More on Google.... (as if there isn't already enough!)... now that information protection and government requests are becoming more visible on the discussion forums.. it might be that,

In the end, Google will become a regulated quasi-utility. It's easy to suggest why this should happen, but profoundly difficult to imagine how. Yet where there's a will, the political elites will eventually find a way. The key challenge for Google involves slowing down the process. Arguably, this now matters more to shareholders than new product development. Regulated companies make smaller profits than you'd otherwise expect.

Read more at - 'Word War III: Google vs. Governments'

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Google and Library of Congress archive tweets

2010-05-26T09:22:00.000+01:00

Tweeting or Twittering has become a much publicised phenomenon recently... what with the protests in Iran; Chavez daily Tweets; and Obama's not-so-nice threats.... well, now the whole message archive is getting the Google treatment:

Every single public tweet, dating back to the very first missive posted on March 21, 2006, will now be housed in the government's Library of Congress. Plus, Google is making the Twitter archive searchable. The Library of Congress -- which boasts millions of books, recordings, photographs, maps and manuscripts in its collections -- announced on Wednesday (via Twitter) that is has acquired all public tweets in the Twitter archive. "Expect to see an emphasis on the scholarly and research implications of the acquisition. I'm no Ph.D., but it boggles my mind to think what we might be able to learn about ourselves and the world around us from this wealth of data," wrote a Library of Congress representative in a Facebook note.

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Mobile Lives

2010-05-24T15:22:00.001+01:00

Hot off the press! A new book just published (May 14th, Routledge) called 'Mobile Lives' by Anthony Elliot and John Urry. It's description is ideal for this New Mobilities blog:

How should we understand the personal and social impacts of complex mobility systems? Can lifestyles based around intensive travel, transport and tourism be maintained in the 21^st century? What possibility post-carbon lifestyles?

In this provocative study of "life on the move", Anthony Elliott and John Urry explore how complex mobility systems are transforming everyday, ordinary lives. The authors develop their arguments through an analysis of various sectors of mobile lives: networks, new digital technologies, consumerism, the lifestyles of ‘globals’, and intimate relationships at-a-distance. Elliott and Urry introduce a range of new concepts – miniaturized mobilities, affect storage, network capital, meetingness, neighbourhood lives, portable personhood, ambient place, globals – to capture the specific ways in which mobility systems intersect with mobile lives.

Also - another new book has just hit the market which may be of interest to some readers of this blog. It is titled UNDERSTANDING TOURISM by Kevin Hannam and Dan Knox, Sage 2010 and contains a very interesting mobilities view of tourism with useful student-friendly text and exercises.

Just thought I would pass it on!

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First Person Experience of Body Transfer in Virtual Reality

2010-05-21T08:41:00.000+01:00

More on the virtual theme..this time with a physical body element that gives a new depth to the avatar phenomenon:

European researchers have used immersive virtual reality in the first experiment to show that body ownership can be transferred to a virtual body. A first-person perspective of a life-sized virtual human female body that appears to substitute the male subjects' own bodies was sufficient to generate a body transfer illusion. The results support the notion that bottom-up perceptual mechanisms can temporarily override top down knowledge. resulting in a radical illusion of transfer of body ownership. The research also illustrates immersive virtual reality as a powerful tool in the study of body representation and experience, since it supports experimental manipulations that would otherwise be infeasible.

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The real world of Second Life

2010-05-19T08:38:00.000+01:00

It's been a while since I last blogged about Second Life...and the avatar antics in that world... well, now there seems to be a more detailed look..at both 2nd and 1st Life!

What are we to make of an adult man who leads an online life in which his avatar is an 11-year-old girl?
Inhabitants of Second Life, the online virtual world where this man/girl hangs out, are not troubled by such questions. The ability to explore alternative identities is what attracts many people there in the first place.
For the rest of us, we can find some answers in Life 2.0, a carefully-produced documentary about the real physical lives of Second Lifers.

Filmmaker Jason Spingarn-Koff, who has a background in television science documentaries, either worked hard to track down the right subjects or got very lucky. Their stories are engrossing and, in one case, remarkable. The result is a calm and tender account of Second Life and its impact on three American families.
Aside from the adult who plays at being a child, Spingarn-Koff follows a working-class Detroit woman who makes her living selling clothes and buildings in Second Life. She was earning a six-figure income until another Second Life resident began cloning her products, prompting one of the first lawsuits aimed at protecting "property" in a virtual world.

The film's third strand is a portrait of a man and woman who meet in Second Life and eventually separate from their partners and move in together in the real world.

Second Life is genuinely strange, so it is easy to think that the extremophiles - such as the folks who take on animal avatars and seek out virtual sex with other virtual "furries" - define the place. But Spingarn-Koff's film succeeds because it ignores the oddness and focuses on the people behind the avatars, and what Second Life means to them. Somehow it makes Second Life seem both bizarre and rather ordinary.

Read original article at 'The real world of Second Life'

Hack attacks mounted on car control systems

2010-05-17T14:50:00.000+01:00

Now this is interesting news: it seems that the computer systems used to control modern cars are 'very vulnerable to attack', according to new expert research:

An investigation by security researchers found the systems to be "fragile" and easily subverted.
The researchers showed how to kill a car engine remotely, turn off the brakes so the car would not stop and make instruments give false readings.Despite their success, the team said it would be hard for malicious attackers to reproduce their work.

The team of researchers, led by Professor Stefan Savage from the University of California-San Diego, and Tadayoshi Kohno from the University of Washington set out to see what resilience cars had to an attack on their control systems."Our findings suggest that, unfortunately, the answer is 'little,'" wrote the researchers from the Center for Automotive Embedded Systems Security.

The researchers concentrated their attacks on the electronic control units (ECUs)scattered throughout modern vehicles which oversee the workings of many car components. It is thought that modern vehicles have about 100 megabytes of binary code spread across up to 70 ECUs.

Topologies of Travel

2010-04-29T09:19:00.000+01:00

A new publication on the Topologies of Travel is available. It is based on the conference of the title which was held in June 2007 at the University of Trier.

The text in pdf form can be downloaded here

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South Korean children face gaming curfew

2010-04-14T09:21:00.000+01:00

Well, this is not too much of a surprise given the recent baby death of a couple in South Korea who raised a virtual child online.... yet it could become draconian in its implications:

The South Korean government is introducing policies aimed at curbing the amount of time children spend playing online games. The first involves barring online gaming access to young people of school age between 12am (midnight) and 8am.

The other policy suggests slowing down people's internet connections after they have been logged on to certain games for a long period of time.The Culture Ministry is calling on games providers to implement the plans.It is asking the companies to monitor the national identity numbers of their players, which includes the age of the individual.

Parents can also choose to be notified if their identity number is used online.

"The policy provides a way for parents to supervise their children's game playing," Lee Young-ah from the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism told Reuters.

Read more at - 'South Korean children face gaming curfew'

Illegal Downloaders Face Life Internet Ban

2010-04-09T09:18:00.000+01:00

A very sneaky Bill was passed just before the UK Parliament was dissolved. It purports to state that ilegal downloaders could soon be banned for life from using the Internet:

The Digital Economy Bill is aimed at stopping people illegally downloading copyrighted material from the internet.

However, critics of the Bill argue that it could have far greater powers and be used to censor and block free speech by whichever political party is in power.

The Bill was rushed through during the "washout" period before Parliament is dissolved.

Read original post - 'Illegal Downloaders Face Life Internet Ban'

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Beijingers get back on their bikes

2010-04-05T09:31:00.000+01:00

It seems that not only are 'bikes back' on the Beijing streets but that electric bikes are the new hot thing... especially with those conjested streets:

Office worker David Dai is one of a growing army of Beijing residents returning to two-wheeled transport. But the 28-year-old does not rely on his own pedal power - like hundreds of thousands of others, he has bought an electric bike. These battery-powered, and virtually silent, machines have become increasingly common on the streets of the Chinese capital. With roads often clogged with cars - there are now four million vehicles in Beijing - they offer a speedy way to get around. But not everyone seems to like them: government officials are unsure about how to deal with this explosion of electric bicycles.

Congested streets

China used to be known as the "kingdom of bicycles". In the 1980s, four out of five commuters pedalled to work on them in Beijing. But as the capital's residents became richer following economic development, they ditched their bikes for four-wheeled transport.Recent statistics suggest that only one in five city residents now use an ordinary bicycle to travel around.

In a matter of just a few years Beijing has gone from a city with few private cars to one where traffic jams are commonplace. But many Beijing residents are now buying electric bicycles to avoid wasting time on congested streets. "It takes only 10 minutes to ride my electric bike from home to work," said Mr Dai.

Read more at - 'Beijingers get back on their bikes'

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Secret Service Investigating Twitter Accounts Calling for Assassination

2010-04-02T08:25:00.000+01:00

Twitter is back in the news; yet this time it is for assassination rumours... not only does this tell us that posting on Twitter is not going to be private (duh) but also that there are many alphabet agencies peeping in...

The Secret Service is investigating two Twitter account users who made threatening comments about President Obama following the House of Representatives vote on health care legislation.

@Solly_Forell, who says he is an “authentic African American” on his Twitter page, allegedly posted comments about assassinating President Obama over the weekend. And he’s not the only one.

Another Twitter user with the account name @THHEE_JAY also tweeted about assassinating the President.
Secret Service Spokesman Malcolm Wiley tells Fox News that Secret Service does not have the luxury of discounting threats against the President and the agency is aware of the postings and is currently investigating.

Original source - 'Secret Service Investigating Twitter Accounts Calling for Assassination'

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Girl starved to death while parents raised virtual child in online game

2010-03-31T08:22:00.000+01:00

Now here is a warning shot across the bow of viritual 'life games' such as Second Life - the possibility of escapism from real life with threatening consequences:

South Korean police have arrested a couple for starving their three-month-old daughter to death while they devoted hours to playing a computer game that involved raising a virtual character of a young girl. The 41-year-old man and 25-year-old woman, who met through a chat website, reportedly left their infant unattended while they went to internet cafes. They only occasionally dropped by to feed her powdered milk.
"I am sorry for what I did and hope that my daughter does not suffer any more in heaven," the husband is quoted as saying on the asiaone website.

According to the Yonhap news agency, South Korean police said the couple had become obsessed with raising a virtual girl called Anima in the popular role-playing game Prius Online. The game, similar to Second Life, allows players to create another existence for themselves in a virtual world, including getting a job, interacting with other users and earning an extra avatar to nurture once they reach a certain level.

"The couple seemed to have lost their will to live a normal life because they didn't have jobs and gave birth to a premature baby," Chung Jin-Won, a police officer, told Yonhap. "They indulged themselves in the online game of raising a virtual character so as to escape from reality, which led to the death of their real baby."

Read original post - 'Girl starved to death while parents raised virtual child in online game'

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Hacker Disables More Than 100 Cars Remotely

2010-03-29T09:13:00.000+01:00

Wired has an interesting post on 'hacking cars', which could point to future 'issues' if/when manufacturers start to install remote disabling devices into cars... hackers know how to get their own back!

More than 100 drivers in Austin, Texas found their cars disabled or the horns honking out of control, after an intruder ran amok in a web-based vehicle-immobilization system normally used to get the attention of consumers delinquent in their auto payments.
Police with Austin’s High Tech Crime Unit on Wednesday arrested 20-year-old Omar Ramos-Lopez, a former Texas Auto Center employee who was laid off last month, and allegedly sought revenge by bricking the cars sold from the dealership’s four Austin-area lots.

“We initially dismissed it as mechanical failure,” says Texas Auto Center manager Martin Garcia. “We started having a rash of up to a hundred customers at one time complaining. Some customers complained of the horns going off in the middle of the night. The only option they had was to remove the battery.”

The dealership used a system called Webtech Plus as an alternative to repossessing vehicles that haven’t been paid for. Operated by Cleveland-based Pay Technologies, the system lets car dealers install a small black box under vehicle dashboards that responds to commands issued through a central website, and relayed over a wireless pager network. The dealer can disable a car’s ignition system, or trigger the horn to begin honking, as a reminder that a payment is due. The system will not stop a running vehicle.

Read more at - 'Hacker Disables More Than 100 Cars Remotely'

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Looks can't kill but might control your phone

2010-03-26T08:49:00.002Z

Now here's a scenerio: 'we may have to get ready for another odd sight: people who quickly flick their gaze sideways and roll their eyes for no apparent reason. They'll be controlling their phones or their music players'. Yep...and this was demonstrated at the Mobile World congress in Barcelona, Spain, Wednesday, Feb. 17, 2010:

They'll be controlling their phones or their music players. NTT DoCoMo has created headphones that sense eye movements. For instance, you can look from right to left to pause your music. Look right, then right again, to skip to the next track. Roll them clockwise to raise the volume.

The headphones look much like regular earbuds, connected by a cable to a phone. They sense the movements of the eyeballs by measuring tiny changes in electric charge. It turns out that the cornea, the outer surface of the eyes, has a positive charge. When you look left, the resulting shift in the electrical charge can be detected as far away as the ears. And no, this is not the source of the expression "electrifying gaze."

Read more at 'Looks can't kill but might control your phone

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A Global Social Network Without The Language Barrier!

2010-03-24T08:45:00.002Z

Now here's a really smart idea...transgressing the main barrier hampering social networks - the language barrier. So why not just translate each other in real-time? Well..... it looks like a solution has arrived:

The Mojofiti website, now in its second round of Beta testing, allows you to build a profile, make friends, form groups, and start a blog – your standard social networking tools. The twist is in a series of tabs on the left of the screen bearing the flags of different nations. Click on a flag and everything on the site is instantly translated into any one of 27 different languages. That blog post you just wrote, it’s in French now. Or maybe you want to read your friend’s profile in Korean. Easily done. The real innovation, of course, is not that you can arbitrarily translate your text into another language, but that you have access to thousands of other users without having to worry about their native language. I type in English, you type in Tagalog, our friend types in Farsi – it doesn’t matter. We each read in our own native language as our content is translated automatically in real time. Mojofiti uses text translation to pry open social networking and fit the world inside.

Now, Mojofiti is really a compilation of different technologies all rolled into one. The website harnesses the power of Wordpress, Buddypress, and Google’s machine dictionaries. Yep, let’s make that very clear, Mojofiti uses Google text translations to power its site. That means that Mojofiti has all the same limitations (and capabilities) of the Google tool you’ve come to expect. Great speed, great range, but sometimes there’s trouble with slang, idioms, subtlety, and precise intent. It’s a good tool, I use it all the time, but Google translation does have its imperfections and you can expect them to carry over to Mojofiti. That being said, after exploring this new social network I never felt like I ran into any more problems with language than I would on any other site. The occasional sentence poorly translated into English was indistinguishable from how people write on the Internet anyway.

Augmented Identity

2010-03-22T08:41:00.002Z

Technology Review has a post on a new phone application that 'lets users point a smart phone at a stranger and immediately learn about them premiered last Tuesday at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain. Developed by The Astonishing Tribe (TAT), a Swedish mobile software and design firm, the prototype software combines computer vision, cloud computing, facial recognition, social networking, and augmented reality.' Now there's a combination! It's a confluence of mobile technologies to frame each identity:

"It's taking social networking to the next level," says Dan Gärdenfors, head of user experience research at TAT. "We thought the idea of bridging the way people used to meet, in the real world, and the new Internet-based ways of congregating would be really interesting."
TAT built the augmented ID demo, called Recognizr, to work on a phone that has a five-megapixel camera and runs the Android operating system. A user opens the application and points the phone's camera at someone nearby. Software created by Swedish computer-vision firm Polar Rose then detects the subject's face and creates a unique signature by combining measurements of facial features and building a 3-D model. This signature is sent to a server where it's compared to others stored in a database. Providing the subject has opted in to the service and uploaded a photo and profile of themselves, the server then sends back that person's name along with links to her profile on several social networking sites, including Twitter or Facebook. The Polar Rose software also tracks the position of the subject's head--TAT uses this information to display the subject's name and icons for the Web links on the phone's screen without obscuring her face.

Read more on 'Augmented Identity'

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Cyberwar declared as China hunts for the West’s intelligence secrets

2010-03-20T09:38:00.002Z

It seems that cyberattacks coming out of China have been rapidly escalating...and the West is starting to get concerned over secret intelligence:

Urgent warnings have been circulated throughout Nato and the European Union for secret intelligence material to be protected from a recent surge in cyberwar attacks originating in China. The attacks have also hit government and military institutions in the United States, where analysts said that the West had no effective response and that EU systems were especially vulnerable because most cyber security efforts were left to member states.

Nato diplomatic sources told The Times: “Everyone has been made aware that the Chinese have become very active with cyber-attacks and we’re now getting regular warnings from the office for internal security.” The sources said that the number of attacks had increased significantly over the past 12 months, with China among the most active players.

In the US, an official report released on Friday said the number of attacks on Congress and other government agencies had risen exponentially in the past year to an estimated 1.6 billion every month.

Read original article - 'Cyberwar declared as China hunts for the West’s intelligence secrets'

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English into Spanish as you speak

2010-03-19T09:56:00.000Z

Speaking in foreign tongues is now a pretty slick reality, thanks to this new iPhone application:

Jibbigo is a new iPhone app that can translate English speech into Spanish—and the reverse—all without going online. You simply launch the $25 app and speak into your iPhone's microphone and the translation is played over the speaker. It's like having a live interpreter in your pocket, without requiring that said interpreter also be a contortionist.

On the iPhone 3GS, the app can handle translating both languages simultaneously, to facilitate conversations. Users of earlier iPhone models need to choose which direction they'd like to translate when they launch the app, and restart it to switch. As a slick bonus, the app handles all its translation duties on the iPhone itself, and doesn't need an Internet connection at all.

According to the developers, the Jibbigo app isn't limited to certain phrases and expressions; it's armed with a dictionary of 40000 words, and performs well if you limit yourself to one or two sentences at a time.

Read more at - 'New iPhone app translates English into Spanish as you speak'

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DARPA kick-starts flying car program

2010-03-17T08:45:00.000Z

More on the military pursuit of their ideal terrain and air vehicle.... but will it ever take off?! (yes - pun intended!)

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) will this month hold its first Proposers' Day Workshop in support of a flying car program it will begin this year known as the Transformer (TX). The goal of the TX will be to build a flying vehicle that will let military personnel avoid water, difficult terrain, and road obstructions as well as IED and ambush threats by driving and flying when necessary.

DARPA said the vehicle will need to be able to drive on prepared surface and light off-road conditions, as well as support Vertical Takeoff and Landing (VTOL) features. The TX will also support range and speed efficiencies that will allow for missions to be performed on a single tank of fuel. DARPA said the TX will "provide the flexibility to adapt to traditional and asymmetric threats by providing the operator unimpeded movement over difficult terrain. In addition, transportation is no longer restricted to trafficable terrain that tends to makes movement predictable."

Read more - 'DARPA kick-starts flying car program'

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Sat-nav devices face big errors as solar activity rises

2010-03-15T08:00:00.000Z

The BBC has an interesting post on the potential disruption to satallite navigation due to increases in solar activity (sun flares). Now that we live in a global infrastructure that is vulnerable to communication 'impacts', such issues are worth considering:

The Sun's irregular activity can wreak havoc with the weak sat-nav signals we use.
The last time the Sun reached a peak in activity, satellite navigation was barely a consumer product. But the Sun is on its way to another solar maximum, which could generate large and unpredictable sat-nav errors.It is not just car sat-nav devices that make use of the satellite signals; accurate and dependable sat-nav signals have, since the last solar maximum, quietly become a necessity for modern infrastructure...

...So as the Sun builds up to its peak in a few years' time, be aware that your sat-nav may for a time give some strange results - or for a short while none at all.

Read more at - 'Sat-nav devices face big errors as solar activity rises'

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Digital doomsday: the end of knowledge

2010-03-12T08:06:00.000Z

NewScientist has a post examing the vulnerability of digital knowledge, in the light of future storage and transmission. Is our digital information safe for future generations?

Even as we are acquiring ever more extraordinary knowledge, we are storing it in ever more fragile and ephemeral forms. If our civilization runs into trouble, like all others before it, how much would survive? Of course, in the event of a disaster big enough to wipe out all humans, such as a colossal asteroid strike, it would not really matter. But suppose, however, that something less cataclysmic occurs. The increasing complexity and interdependency of society is making civilization ever more vulnerable to such events. Whatever the cause, if the power were cut off to the banks of computers that now store much of humanity's knowledge, and people stopped looking after them and the buildings housing them, and factories ceased to churn out new chips and drives, how long would all our knowledge survive?

Read more - 'Digital doomsday: the end of knowledge'

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Why you won't recognize the 'Net in 10 years

2010-03-10T09:40:00.000Z

Security on the Net has always been a problem...but will it continue to be a problem...? Not, apparently, if the boffs have their way:

As they imagine the Internet of 2020, computer scientists across the country are starting from scratch and re-thinking everything: from IP addresses to DNS to routing tables to Internet security in general. They're envisioning how the Internet might work without some of the most fundamental features of today's ISP and enterprise networks.

Their goal is audacious: To create an Internet without so many security breaches, with better trust and built-in identity management. Researchers are trying to build an Internet that's more reliable, higher performing and better able to manage exabytes of content. And they're hoping to build an Internet that extends connectivity to the most remote regions of the world, perhaps to other planets...

... This high-risk, long-range Internet research will kick into high gear in 2010, as the U.S. federal government ramps up funding to allow a handful of projects to move out of the lab and into prototype. Indeed, the United States is building the world's largest virtual network lab across 14 college campuses and two nationwide backbone networks so that it can engage thousands – perhaps millions – of end users in its experiments.

Read more - 'Why you won't recognize the 'Net in 10 years'

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