PRI's The World: Technology Podcast 214

October 20, 2008

We (this is the so-called royal "we," by the way...I don't have an intern or "production assistant") cooked up a meaty technology podcast (WTP 214) for you this week. First up, Wall Street may be talking about a "bear market" these says, but WTP would prefer to discuss DarkMarket, a website that is, well, no more. DarkMarket was described by Britain's Serious Organized Crime Agency (Soca) today as a "one-stop shop for the online criminal." Soca worked in conjunction with the FBI, as well as Turkish and German police, in shutting down the site, and arresting nearly 60 people across the globe. They are accused of buying and selling all kinds of credit card data, false documents, bank log-ins, etc. worth millions of dollars. We have an interview with Soca's Sharon Lemon about the site, and about the arrests.

Next, we shoot into space for a trio of interesting stories. First up, at right is the real International Space Station. We want to bring you news about something called the Virtual Space Station. Living in space isn't easy, and while astronauts are, generally speaking, good team players, lots of time in close quarters can lead to conflict, and even depression. But now, a Dartmouth doctor and a Harvard psychologist have created a multi-media program that's designed to help astronauts resolve those conflicts, and fight depression. We follow that with a piece on efforts to clean up space junk, and then a follow-up on a story I blogged earlier about one company's attempt to expand your social network to include...aliens.

Then, we come back down to earth. Tired of the morning paper? Tired of carrying it around, and worrying about all the pretty trees you're killing? We have a report on a British company called Plastic Logic, which is making a super-thin, super-light e-reader made entirely of, you guessed it, plastic. Think Amazon's Kindle, only thinner. The idea is that people will forsake their paper newspapers, and instead download them onto this e-reader, which is only about the size of a magazine. But without my paper, what will I hide behind when I'm riding the bus and don't want to engage in conversation? Tricky.

And we end with the audio version of a story I blogged earlier this week. Meet Shiraslan Qurbanov, the Virtual Lion of Azerbaijan.

(Photos: International Space Station: NASA; Electronic newspaper: Plastic Logic)