Here is my weekly collection of articles that were not commented here — except if I missed them, which is highly possible because the search feature of Smart Mobs is currently hanging my browsers.

At $250, a PC that aims to connect world’s poor
Raj Reddy, a pioneering researcher in artificial intelligence and a professor at Carnegie Mellon University, plans to unveil his project this year. It is called the PCtvt, a $250 personal computer that is wirelessly networked for the four billion people around the world who live on less than $2,000 a year.
Source: John Markoff, The New York Times, via the International Herald Tribune, August 16, 2004


Arranged marriages go online in Kerala, India
Putting a new age spin on the age-old custom of arranged marriages, a marriage bureau is out to prove that marriages are made in cyberspace now at the click of a mouse.
Source: Indo-Asian News Service, via 123Bharath.Com, August 17, 2004


DNA lab offers high street paternity test
High Street paternity tests are to be offered across Scotland by a pioneering DNA lab after a surge in the numbers of ordinary people wanting to find out the true identity of their father.
Source: Ian Johnston, The Scotsman, August 17, 2004


Space-age sport
For golfers, cyclists, sailors, and others, Global Positioning System’s signals are in play.
Source: Beth Healy, Boston Globe, August 16, 2004


Las Vegas Airport: Reasons for RFID
McCarran International Airport strives to be aggressive when it comes to implementing technologies that will better operations and the passenger experience. According to Samuel Ingalls, assistant director of information systems, the next big IT project at LAS is security, including 100 percent RFID (radio frequency identification) bag tags.
Source: Jodi Richards, Airport Business, August 2004


Japanese bank taps NEC for document security using RFID
NEC claims this is the world’s first system to use RFID this way. The system, which is still under development, will use omnidirectional antennas attached to bookshelves and filing cabinets. They will communicate data from RFID tags embedded in documents to a software system that offers real-time document tracking, according to Motofumi Yamamuro, an NEC spokesperson. NEC is co-developing the system with Nikko Telecommunications Co., a computer systems sales company.
Source: Paul Kallender, IDG News Service, August 18, 2004


DNA technique protects against ‘evil’ emails
A technique originally designed to analyse DNA sequences is the latest weapon in the war against spam. An algorithm named Chung-Kwei (after a feng-shui talisman that protects the home against evil spirits) can catch nearly 97 per cent of spam.
[Note: for even more information, please read this page about Anti-Spam Filtering at IBM Research.]
Source: Danny O’Brien, New Scientist, August 19, 2004


Controversy Flares Over RFID Patent Fees
The RFID industry is buzzing with controversy over Intermec Technologies Corp.’s quietly evolving plans to tack patent royalties on to competitors’ future products. How much money is at stake? Intermec is looking for 5 percent royalties on RFID tags, labels, chips and inlays, and 7.5 percent fees on readers and printer-encoders. The fees would be attached to future products conforming to EPCglobal’s emerging EPC UHF Generation 2 standard, which incorporates RFID tagging of individual items.
Source: Jacqueline Emigh, eWEEK, August 18, 2004


Phone cos. profit on calls from jails
Telephone companies and California counties have made hundreds of millions of dollars from some of the state’s poorest people through high, unregulated phone rates for calls from local jails, an Associated Press investigation has found. The average California county jail inmate’s local call home costs more than seven times as much as a 50-cent pay phone call. It adds up to more than $120 million a year in phone bills for families and friends of county inmates statewide. The inflated rates they pay make service contracts with jails so lucrative that carriers offer counties signing bonuses, nearly $17 million in the case of Los Angeles County.
Source: Kim Curtis and Bob Porterfield, Associated Press, August 21, 2004

See you next week…

Here is my weekly collection of articles that were not commented here — except if I missed them, which is highly possible because the search feature of Smart Mobs is currently hanging my browsers.

At $250, a PC that aims to connect world’s poor
Raj Reddy, a pioneering researcher in artificial intelligence and a professor at Carnegie [...]