Piercing the Fog With a Tiny Chip “The high-frequency beams that the system generates and receives may one day handle many functions, including the usual radar jobs of ranging and location. In cars, for example, the chip might be used to detect other vehicles looming in the fog.”
NY Times
In Japan, a Wireless Vision of Future for U.S. “In search of a chic cafe hidden in the neon alleys of a teeming Tokyo business district, Hiroki Wai activated the global positioning system on his cell phone and punched in the cafe’s phone number. Instantly, a detailed map appeared and a perky female computer voice was navigating Wai toward a hot date with a $9 latte.”<>Washington Post
Change is as good as a rest for workers “As the traditional “job for life” becomes less and less common, the typical individual will re-train several times for a new career, switch employers more readily, and even hold down different jobs at the same time.”
Scotsman.com
Interview with author of “Sounding out the City: Personal Stereos and the Management of Everyday Life” on the impact of the iPod
“For example, a lot of people use it to go to work, for commuting. I found that they use the same music on a regular basis. They will often play the same half-dozen tunes for three months, and each part of the journey has its own tune. It gives them control of the journey, the timing of the journey and the space they are moving through. It’s a generalization, but the main use (of the iPod) is control. People like to be in control. They are controlling their space, their time and their interaction … and they’re having a good time. That can’t be understated — it gives them a lot of pleasure.”
Wired News
Miners tap into video goldmine “Despite a challenge of translating from Kyrgyz to Russian to English, they told compelling stories about the need for more technical knowledge.
Other video conference sessions looked at safety and investment issues. In one conference, participants from the Kyrgyz Republic were able to quiz specialists from the IMF in Washington about certain regulatory issues.
BBC NEWS
“WaveMarket extends recent, fast-emerging blogging technology into a wider circle. Any mobile handset user can now share information on anything–restaurants, safety warnings, missing children, truck tracking or buddy finder alerts. Through WaveMarket’s “master blog,” everyone becomes an instant broadcast journalist on location, and through our blog, WaveMarket becomes their distribution channel.”
Wavemarket
Sales of Net phone gear surge on VoIP “Worldwide sales of Internet phone equipment rose 31 percent in the last three months of 2003 and could triple by 2007, as demand surges for voice over Internet Protocol gear, according to analyst firm Infonetics Research.”
CNET News.com
Grand CIO Enterprise Value Award Winner 2004 – The Chicago Police Dept “Accessing mug shots: From up to four days without CLEAR to four seconds with CLEAR. Pulling a rap sheet: From four hours from request to receipt, down to seconds. Logging in seized property and evidence: From three hours, down to one hour. Checking offenders’ prison status and release dates: From 30 minutes, down to one minute.”
CIO Magazine
These animations have “been created by our computer technique which automatically fuses the NASA input images by simulating the human brain.” I.E Take two images from the Mars Rovers and create these videos.
MS Research
Hospital of the future / High-tech system helps improve quality of care “An 81-year-old woman arrives by ambulance at El Camino Hospital’s emergency department after falling in her home. Dr. Phil Strong, a hospital- based internist, reaches for a tablet-size personal computer instead of a chart.”
SFGate.com
Global project helps get message across “Australians will soon be able to swap text messages with most mobile phone users around the globe regardless of network.”
ITNews
“The Virtual Airplane places the patient in the window seat of the passenger cabin of a commercial airplane. With a few simple keystrokes, the therapist can expose the patient to the different aspects of a complete flying experience such as sitting in the plane with the engines on or off, taxiing on the runway, takeoff, flying in either smooth or turbulent weather, and landing. The sights and sound mimic those found in actual flight. Patients experience anxiety as if they were actually on a real plane.”
virtually better
“Traffic Island Discs is a radio programme about music, people and spaces. We roam the streets looking for people wearing headphones, stop them, and interview them while recording whatever they are listening to. The result is a half hour tour of an area of London, heard through people’s personal tastes and rhythms.”
Traffic Island Discs
“The US Army is building a second version of Earth on computer to help it prepare for conflicts around the world.”
BBC NEWS
Article about creating devices for the disabled from off the shelf components. “Researchers at the Rehabilitation Engineering Research Center on Mobile Wireless Technologies for Persons with Disabilities, located at the Georgia Institute of Technologies, are hacking a variety of off-the-shelf components and mobile devices to improve the quality of life for individuals with various impairments.”
The Feature
How the Wi-Fi Future Might Look. “From seamless switching among networks to making cell calls over the Net to beaming video from PC to TV, the possibilities seem unbounded”.
BW Online
New Mitsubishi LCD Panel displays Images on both sides. “Mitsubishi Electric’s LCD Panel will enable phone manufacturers to use a single panel, reducing the weight and production cost of mobile phones. The company is also expected to develop the two-sided displays for use in laptop computers.”
i4u.com
Switching between Wi-fi and Cellular. “Starting this summer, says Ross Ireland, chief technology officer at SBC, the nation’s largest DSL provider, his company will allow many customers to switch between networks — Wi-Fi or cellular — when working on their laptop or personal digital assistant (PDA). “
Business Week
Braille-based GPS navigation system. “Know where you are, where you are going and the best way to get there with BrailleNote Global Positioning System software with easy-to-follow maps.”
pulsedata.com
You Can Take It With You. “A mobile phone with storage isn’t just an interface for rich media, applications, and files located elsewhere — it’s a full-fledged computer.”
TheFeature
FlipStart ultra-portable. “The Microsoft Windows XP-based FlipStart combines the performance and functionality of your laptop with the “always-on” connectivity of your wireless PDA in one ultra-mobile device.”
FlipStart.Vulcan.com
Fashion phones. ‘”Fashion Extravaganza” is the motto for the new quartet of fashion phones from Xelibri that match the richness and variety so characteristic of the catwalk kingdom.’
Xelibri
Computing at the speed of light. “Intel believes the finding could have profound implications for the links between servers in corporate data centers. Eventually, the technology could find its way into personal computers and even consumer electronics.”
Wired News
eBay to Expand Developers’ Access With Beefier Web Services.
“At the ETech conference on Tuesday, eBay officials said the online marketplace plans to add SOAP and Java support to its Web services program for developers. Experts said it and other major Web players increasingly are becoming application platforms.”
eWeek.com
The LEGO Learning Institute. Some interesting looking papers here. “As a part of the LEGO Company we have unparalleled access to a wealth of experience and expertise in play and learning. Our opportunity is to bring this collective knowledge and insight to new audiences, while at the same time generate helpful feedback to the people who design and build the company’s play experiences.”
legolearning.net
Various future vision resources from Vodaphone. “In this website we will enable you to explore what we think that future might look like, experience some of the changes we believe will happen, and tell us what you think of them.”
Vodafone
Software to Detect Feelings of Love
“The software then takes in the voice and then through a series of complex mathematical [computations], outputs in real time the feelings of the other person on the screen, says Nicole Graham, a spokesperson for V Entertainment. If there’s a love connection, several factors – such as embarrassment, concentration, and stress – will rise she says.
ABC News
VeriSign works to ID kid surfers “The token, which plugs into a computer’s USB port, will allow children to encrypt e-mail, to access kid-safe sites and to purchase items that require a digital signature, said George Schu, a vice president at Mountain View, Calif.-based VeriSign.”
CNET News.com
Women over 40 biggest online gamers.
AOL, a unit of Time Warner Inc., released a study on Tuesday showing that U.S. women over the age of 40 spend nearly 50 percent more time each week playing online games than men and are more likely to play online games daily than men or teens.
MSNBC
The Small World Project is a study that asks participants to get a message to a “target” person by forwarding through friends. “We find that successful social search is conducted primarily through intermediate to weak strength ties, does not require highly connected ‘hubs’ to succeed, and, in contrast to unsuccessful social search, disproportionately relies on professional relationships.”
Columbia University
Social Networks are trying to move to a pay for model.
NYTimes
Overview of Voice over IP, from the technological impact to issues around existing carriers.
Business Week
Article covering a range of security concerns, including archiving and file or identity theft.
Wired News
NYChanis is a website that makes a lot of organizational data on New York neighborhoods available to everyone. Part of a move towards “democratizing data”?
NY Times
This article highlights a growing gulf between the computer-savvy and the “not-so-savvy”, in this case around viruses. “It takes affirmative action on the part of the clueless user to become infected”.
NYtimes.com
Tamagotchi digital pets to return, and this time they breed – Feb. 5, 2004
CNN.com
A study by British Telecom around customer relationship management finds that information is often recorded wrongly about customers, employees guard their contact information from others in their company and many cannot trace customers’ business history.
The Register
VoiceXML is a specification used in conjunction with speech recognition and speech synthesis systems to support interactive voice response applications.
InfoWorld
“Language-independent e-mail” on a low cost device. Handwritten e-mail means no worrying about character sets for many non-Roman script languages.
The SWIPE Toolkit is a set of utilities and advice for figuring out how others are using your personal data. It includes a barcode decoder for US drivers licenses and a calculator for figuring out what the “fair market value” is of your personal data.
turbulence.org
This site gives an overview of aging and accessible technologies, and has a section particularly targeted at baby-boomers coming to terms with their “age-related” difficulties.
Microsoft.com
40% of small to medium sized companies are concerned about their dependence on Microsoft software.
The Register
Frontier Syndrome is the promise that the “next big thing” will solve all of our problems. But it doesn’t.
techReview
Cities are increasingly using Geographic Information Systems to tell them everything from where units should be placed in emergencies, to which roads shouldn’t have holes dug in them.
eweek.com
IBM is releasing packages of software and services aimed at specific vertical markets, like banking, insurance and the financial sector.
CNET News.com
The European Union are supporting research into Power Line Communications that are hoped to bring broadband and other services to remote areas.
infoworld
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