Using Spoof Card Could Get You Time

October 22, 2009

Phone pranks have finally arrived in the 21st century and they're called "spoofing." Thanks to a new service called SpoofCard, which allows people to make calls via the Internet, subscribers can change the phone number callees see on their caller ID display, they can change their voice so that they sound like someone else and they can record phone calls.

In last few days, Ali Wise, publicity director for Dolce and Gabbana, has gotten into a bunch of trouble (and has gotten fired) for using SpoofCard to access the voice-mail accounts of girlfriends/finaces of ex-lovers. It was easy enough to do. She changed her own number to match the number she was calling. Not realizing the call was an imposter, the voice-mail service automatically granted access to the voice-mail accounts.

I Talk to My GPS Device, Even Though it Doesn’t Talk Back

August 21, 2009

His name is Tim. He has a British accent. And unlike many men I have known in my life, he knows where he’s going. Unfortunately, he’s not a person. He’s the voice of a GPS device.

“Aftah two hundred yahds, turn roight,” Tim says.
“What would I do without you, Tim?” I ask.

Don’t get me wrong. I don’t, like the guy in this commercial, have a crush on a GPS device.

But I do interact with it. I talk to it. Ask it questions. And make general commentaries, even though the machine cannot understand me or talk back.

Have I lost it?

When Will My Bus Come In?

August 19, 2009

Recently, I was a spectator, not a runner, of a marathon. And I realized that marathon runners have something that most buses in the United States lack: a way to convey location and expected time of arrival. You see, runners in most marathons these days wear a computer sensor in their shoe that communicates start and finish times as well as other milestones, such as the 5-mile, 10-mile or half-way point. What's more, friends and family members can sign up to receive email and text message notifications of where their loved ones are on the course.

If a system exists to keep track of and communicate the location of tens of thousands of runners, how come there is no system sending real-time information to my cell phone or email about when my bus is going to arrive?

Why are Speech Recognition and Natural Language Neither of Those?

August 17, 2009

The other day/week/month (it doesn’t matter) I was calling my bank/credit card company/a customer service department at a retail store (it doesn’t matter) because I had a question about my statement/using the card in Europe/why the flowers I ordered hadn’t been delivered to my mother on her birthday (it doesn’t matter) and I did what I always do after dealing unsuccessfully with the electronic operator for more than 10 seconds: I pressed 0. Because listen, electronic-operator-whoever-you-are, you can’t get to the heart of my problem with your rigid line of questioning and your suggestion to check for my answer online at www.youignoramous.com. Give me a human!

After getting my problem solved by a real, live, breathing person with an accent of questionable origin, I got to wondering why speech recognition and natural language technologies still kind of suck. So I decided to ask Jeff Bilmes (University of Washington) and Alex Acero (Microsoft Research).

Wide Angle: Smart Highways

March 23, 2009

Intelligent highways equipped with wireless technology, fiber optics, sensors, cameras, GPS, electronic signs and robotic car have the potential to decrease traffic congestion, increase highway safety and reduce the environmental impact caused by traffic jams. We take a wide angle view on what those future roads may look like, here on Earth and even in the skies.

• Video: Down Future Roads, Everyone's Talking
  Traffic expert Rick Dye weighs in on the future of driving, where cars talk to other cars, your GPS lets you know there's an accident ahead and movies are beamed to your dashboard.

• Video: Is It Future Yet? Robot Cars
  Why drive when robots can do it for you? Researchers at Virginia Tech take Jorge Ribas on a ride into the future of your commute.

• Top 10: Parts of a Smart Highway
  Intelligent highways equipped with wireless technology, fiber optics, sensors, cameras, GPS, electronic signs and robotic car have the potential to decrease traffic congestion, increase highway safety and reduce the environmental impact caused by traffic jams.

• Puzzle: Highways to the Future
  Even without advanced technology and robotic cars, modern-day highways are impressive networks. We feature a few here in puzzles you can solve.

• Video: Flying Car Takes Off
  A new flying car has made its first successful trip down the runway.

• Blog: Transition from Street to Sky
  Terrafugia CEO Carl Dietrich explains how his fuel-efficient, street legal plane, "Transition," could reduce aviation emissions, take advantage of under-utilized public airports and fill awkward transportation gaps.

• Slideshow: Preparing for Flight
  Terrafugia's Transition is part car, part airplane. Here the pilot prepares for the vehicle's first flight. The two-seater airplane is designed to travel both in the air and on the road. See the slide show.

• News: Smart-Braking Car Saves Gas
  Drivers willing to turn braking and acceleration over to a computer could save nearly 25 percent on their annual gas bills, say the British developers of an advanced new cruise control system.

Steel-melting solar mirror, eco-friendly fireworks, freeing oneself from email's grip and more!

July 04, 2008

June 27 / The New York Times
Data Centers Explore Novel Ways to Cut Energy Use
Data centers make the Web possible. Make my job possible. But electricity consumed by microprocessors in those data center is rising by 16 percent per year. That kind of voracious appetite for energy is expensive and not very green. But people at the recent Data Center Energy Summit are brainstorming solutions to curb the beast's energy appetite, including reusing hot water from cooling systems to filling a town's swimming pool.

June 28 / The New York Times
I Freed Myself From E-Mail’s Grip
Gasp! This guy stopped using email. On purpose. His server didn't even go down or anything!

June 29 / Guardian
Calls for ID Card to Replace Passwords
Passwords be damned! Finally, an industry group known as the Information Card Foundation is advocating that we replace our passwords with an electronic ID card. Advantages: security and signing in just once.

June 30 / Guardian
Welcome to the Particle Menagerie
Up, down, top, bottom, charm, strange, axions, sleptons and quarks. How do physicists dream up such whimsical names for the fundamental particles they discover? Simon Singh explains

June 30 /  Guardian
The Brains Behind the Operation
Cern scientists have invented a new way to network computers, and it could be the next leap forward in computing.

June 30 / Discovery News
Meet the Steel-Melting Solar Mirror
Enterprising kids know you can melt crayons by focusing light on them with a magnifying glass. MIT students are now vaporizing wood, and can theoretically melt steel, by focusing sunlight with mirrors.

July 1 / Popular Science
Powering Cars With Toxic Waste
Scientists invent a uranium-eating molecule that could help turn nuclear junk into fuel.

July 1 / Technology Trends
Toward Eco-Friendly Fireworks
Researchers are developing new pyrotechnic formulas that burn cleaner and produce less smoke.

July 1 / Scientific American
Farming Solar Energy in Space
Japanese scientists are working on the hardware needed to realize orbital generators as a form of clean, renewable energy, with plans to complete a prototype in about 20 years.

July 1 / The New York Times
Google’s Ethos, Applied to Dining
Crowdsourcing sommeliers and open source recipes. Let's eat.

July 1 / Guardian
Hybrid Embryos: U.K. Team Plans Stem Cell First
British scientists got the okay from their gov to create the world's first human stem cells from embryos that are part human and part animal.

July 2 / Nature
How to Weave an Invisible Rug
You've heard of an invisibility cloak. Researchers calculate that a carpet, not a cloak, would be the most realistic kind of cloaking device. It would produce a controlled mirage.

July 2 / The New York Times
Obama Voters Protest His Switch on Telecom Immunity
Senator Barack Obama’s Web site has netted him lots-o cash. Now it's netted him lots-o backlash. When followers heard he supported legislation granting legal immunity to telecommunications companies that cooperated with the Bush administration’s program of wiretapping without warrants, they protested electronically.

July 3 / Wired
Laugh at High Gas Prices With a 282-MPG VW
Fuel efficiency seems like oxymoron. But now Volkswagen is upping the ante with a new bullet-shaped car that gets triple-digit mpg. Muh-ha-ha-ha-ha.

July 3 / Scientific American
Who Will Die?: Computer Predicts Which Death Row Inmates Will Be It
Sounds like a gruesome game that no one would want to play. But the predictions could actually lead to a fairer appeals process.

July 3 / The New York Times
See Spot Run. Now Find Out Where He Went.
Track everyone, everything with GPS, for under $130.

July 3 / Guardian
Environment: Climate Risk From Flat-Screen TV
The rising demand for flat-screen televisions could have a greater impact on global warming than the world's largest coal-fired power stations, a leading environmental scientist warned yesterday.

July 3 / IEEE Spectrum Online
Crimeware Pays
Adware, phishing, and spam are a strange -- and big -- business.

July 3 / IEEE Spectrum Online
Iraq Electricity, By the Numbers
The scorching truth about electricity use and need in Iraq.

The Week (According to Me)

June 20, 2008

Don't spend all that time scanning your RSS feed reader. Just read my list.

13 June 08 / The Atlantic
Is Google Making Us Stupid?
Nick Carr writes about how the Internet is changing the way we think.

June 13 / Tech Crunch
Quillpill: A Twitter For Cell-Phone Novelists
Even if they could, few people have the time to write a book. But what if they could Twitter one? For all those aspiring novelists out there, Quillpill might be the app to get them started.

13 June 08 / Guardian
Where Are All the Older Female Geeks?
Since starting her blog, Natalie d'Arbeloff has found that she is not the only older woman in the cybervillage. But they are still in the minority. Come on, she says, what are you waiting for?

June 13 / Wired
Potential New Weapon Against TB: Free Cell Minutes
Researchers at MIT believe they've discovered a new weapon in the battle against tuberculosis: Free cell phone minutes. For years, doctors have struggled to get some TB patients to take all their medication, which generally involves a six-month regimen of multiple drugs. Now a student-led group at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has developed a way to use cell phones to let patients test themselves. And if the tests show patients are following doctor's orders, they get rewarded with free minutes.

June 13 / Wired
IBM's Drumming Car Reads Your Lips. Seriously
The people at IBM are hard at work developing technology we never knew we don't need -- a steering wheel that reads your lips, responds to your facial expressions and turns into a drum machine. Tapping out a beat on the steering wheel while jamming to your favorite tunes will never be the same again.

June 13 / Technology Review
Doubling Laptop Battery Life
Intel's new integrated power management could dramatically reduce power consumption in your laptop by shutting down operations not being used.

June 13 / Technology Review
You've Had a Genetic Test. Now What?
A new project aims to incorporate the results of genetic screening into medicine.

June 16 / Discovery
Robots to Become Lovers, Predict Researchers
Romantic human-robot relationships are no longer the stuff of science fiction -- researchers expect them to become reality within four decades.

June 16 / Science Daily
Using Brainwaves To Chat And Stroll Through Second Life: World's First
On 7th June 2008, Keio University succeeded in the world’s first demonstration experiment with the help of a disabled person to use brainwave to chat and stroll through the virtual world.

June 16 / Nanowerk
NASA nanotechnology research into shape-shifting airplanes
Aircraft of the future will not be built of traditional, multiple, mechanically connected parts and systems. Instead, aircraft wing construction will employ fully integrated, nanotechnology enabled embedded 'smart' materials and actuators that will enable aircraft wings with unprecedented levels of aerodynamic efficiencies and aircraft control.

June 17 / BBC News
Victim of Its Own Success
Life without the internet is unimaginable for the millions who use it every day. But one of the world's leading academics on the impact of the net warns we could be facing its destruction.

June 17 / New York Times
Philadelphia Revives Citywide Wi-Fi Project
Philadelphia revived an effort on Tuesday to provide free citywide wireless Internet access in a project to be run by a new group of investors. The city aims to provide free-of-charge outdoor Web access throughout its 135 square miles, which would be the largest area covered by public Wi-fi of any U.S. city.

June 17 / Webmonkey
Clock Browser Speeds with Webmonkey’s Stopwatch
With Firefox 3, Opera 9.5 and Safari all claiming “faster than ever” speeds with its latest versions, we started wondering which one is really the fastest. After loading some pages and scratching our heads, we hacked together a small JavaScript stopwatch to find out.

June 17 / Discovery
Talking Robofish to Swim in Puget Sound
Marine creatures have communicated with each other for millions of years. Now swimming robots can too.

June 18 / Scientific American
Hands On Computing: How Multi-touch Screens Could Change The Way We Interact With Computers and Each Other
Multi-touch computing could one day free us from the mouse as our primary computer interface, the way the mouse freed us from keyboards.

June 18 / Scientific American
Wi-Maxing That Wireless Internet Connection
A wireless technology called Wi-Max has a much bigger range than Wi-Fi, making it possible to supply wireless internet accessibility to large areas with a few base stations. Christopher Intagliata reports.

June 19 / Etherized
Snail (And We Do Mean Snail) Mail
A group of artists, whose URL reads "boredomresearch," have created Real Snail Mail, the world's first web mail service using live snails. Yep. Three snails (Cecil, Austin and Muriel) have been fitted with RFID chips and antennae that can pick up data from hardware located in their enclosure. You fill out an email form, hit send and they take things from there.

June 19 / Technovelgy
Never-Stop Rail Transit System Proposed
Taiwanese inventor Peng Yu-lun imagines a main track with a large commuter train that does not stop. The train is serviced by smaller train cars that drop off new passengers while picking up those who wish to leave the train.

June 19 / The Engineer
Solar System
A team from MIT has tested a prototype of a new solar power system that consists of a 12ft-wide dish made from a frame of thin, aluminium tubing and strips of mirror.

June 19 / Discovery
New 'Terminator' Robots Go in Harm's Way
IRobot, best known for their cute Roomba robotic vacuum cleaner, has teamed up with Metal Storm, purveyors of the million-rounds-per-minute electric gun, to create a slick, Terminator-like war robot for the U.S. military.

June 19 / New Scientist
Scrapping MPG Could Boost Sales of Greener Cars
What sounds like an arithmetic brain teaser could in fact hold the key to reducing the amount of gas consumed by Americans – and by extension their CO2 emissions. Richard Larrick and Jack Soll of Duke University in the US say that a simple switch from expressing a car's fuel efficiency in miles per gallon (mpg) to gallons per 100 miles makes it much easier for people to assess how much money they could save on fuel.

Could Cellphones Help Democratize Cuba?

April 14, 2008

Starting today, the government of Cuba began selling cell phone service to its citizens. The operative word here is "selling." In a communistic country that provides its citizens with education, housing, and health care, cell phones will not come cheaply.  Each one runs about $65 US and the service, about $120 US per year. For someone pulling in under $20 US a month, that amount seems preposterous.

But after reading this excellent NY Times article about cell phones in developing nations, I'm inclined to think that Cubans can't afford NOT to own a mobile. Reporter Sara Corbett explains how the technology is helping to improve the economic conditions of people living in poverty. A couple of main points:

• cellular network infrastructures are cheaper to build than fixed lines
• no need for a permanent address
• no need to be literate
• a call-back number opens doors to business opportunities previously closed

This last point may be a red herring in a communist country where competition for employment doesn't exist the way it does in democratized places. But that doesn't mean it won't ever exist. We're all witnessing the effect of capitalism on China. And with newbie prez Raul Castro loosening the reins of restrictions in Cuba (he recently put an end to "tourist apartheid"; Cubans are now allowed to stay in state-owned luxury hotels reserved for tourists), other opened doors could follow.

Cell phones have also been enlisted to organize protests, like those recently flaring up during the passing of the Olympic torch.

Could the telecommunications staple we all take for granted spark an economic or political revolution in Cuba?   

Only time—and an expanded infrastructure (made possible by Telecom Italia) to handle the increase in capacity—will tell.

(AP Photo/Ramon Espinosa)

New York Calling

February 29, 2008

From the same folks at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology that brought us CityMotion and an Internet-enabled bus stop comes a new project that uses anonymous cell phone and Internet communications to help visualize human migration. The New York Talk Exchange has three maps that show where the communications come from and where they go as well as how they change over time.

What's great about this project is that you can immediately see the diversity that makes New York unique, both ethnically and socio-economically. For example, the team found the the richest and poorest people are making the most international communication, while the middle group talks locally and nationally.

The researchers also used British Telecom data and found that while New Yorkers reach more frequently  into Asia and South America, Londoners more often communicate with Europe and the United States.

The visualizations are part of an exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art called "Design and the Elastic Mind" that is open through May. If you can't get to the exhibit, you can see a video here.

Text to Pee

February 06, 2008

It's come to this. Because of rampant vandalism in rest area toilets in Finland, the Finnish Road Administration has introduced an SMS security system. Gotta go number one along Highway 1 near Turku? Text message "OPEN" to the phone number given and your request will be granted. The fact that the traffic center holds on to the number for a short time should curb defacement.

Who knew that the Finns were such restroom ruffians. According to the article in the  international edition of the Helsingin Sanomat, the public bathrooms have seen their share of damage, arson, and thefts.

I'd love to see a similar technology brought to American public bathrooms just to enforce flushing.

 

 

Photo credit: VESA-MATTI VÄÄRÄ