At an annual conference, artists and inventors plot to save the world
It is quite a family, as it includes Murray Gell-Mann, the Nobel laureate in physics; Paul Simon, the singer- songwriter; Richard Branson, the Virgin Group magnate; and the founders of Google: Larry Page and Sergey Brin. The occasion is the annual TED conference, named for the convergence of technology, entertainment and design — with a dash of social activism thrown in recently as well. It is expected to draw 1,200 people to Monterey, California, starting Wednesday.
Source: Saul Hansell, The New York Times, via International Herald Tribune, March 5, 2007
IBM sees green in environmental tech
The computing and consulting giant is building up a business to chase “green dollars,” or money spent by corporations that are looking to conserve natural resources and reduce waste. The program, called Big Green Innovations, takes aim at everything from creating “carbon dashboards” that help corporations lower their supply chain’s carbon emissions to designing energy-efficient data centers and more powerful solar cells.
Source: Martin LaMonica, CNET News.com, March 6, 2007
Feds test new data mining program
Lawmakers and privacy advocates are concerned that a powerful new data searching tool being tested by the Department of Homeland Security could pose a threat to Americans’ privacy as it sifts through mountains of information for patterns that might reveal terrorists. Called ADVISE — for Analysis, Dissemination, Visualization, Insight and Semantic Enhancement — the program is capable of linking and cross-matching material from websites and blogs to government records and personal data.
Source: John Yaukey, Gannett News Service, March 7, 2007
The digital building: Security starts at the door
A lock that knows who is authorized to enter the room — a reality thanks to the synthesis of IT and conventional facility management. The ‘digital building’ facilitates everyday working life and makes rooms and computers secure from intruders. Fraunhofer researchers will be presenting new solutions at CeBIT from March 15 - 21.
Source: Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft press release, March 1, 2007
On March 13, Hossein Eslambolchi’s 10-person start-up, Divvio Inc., will turn on a service that automatically finds audio, video, and, eventually, text, on your favorite subjects. Then it weaves these clips together to create personalized multimedia channels that are updated each time you sign on. A channel on the New York Yankees might start with spring training highlights, followed by videotaped interviews and blog postings.
Source: Peter Burrows, BusinessWeek Magazine, March 19, 2007 issue
In search of scientific inspiration at TED
It began with a parade by a marching band and ended with a health professor swallowing a Swedish bayonet sword. It’s not a circus. It was just the opening two-hour session of TED, the annual Technology, Entertainment and Design conference held here Wednesday at the Monterey Convention Center. In fact, this highly exclusive conference, which runs through Saturday, can be jarring to the uninitiated. If it’s not the list of celebrated speakers — physics Nobel Prize-winner Murray Gell-Mann, basketball star Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and former President Bill Clinton — then it’s all the notable attendees hanging around that can unnerve a newbie, or “TED virgin,” as organizers call them.
Source: Stefanie Olsen, CNET News.com, March 8, 2007
FBI’s snooping did not follow rules
The FBI has repeatedly misused the Patriot Act’s extraordinary surveillance powers by obtaining information on Americans unlawfully, the Justice Department’s inspector general said Friday in a report that already has drawn promises of a congressional investigation.
The 199-page report, which found “serious misuse” of the surveillance power (PDF), says that FBI field agents unlawfully accessed telephone companies’ internal databases showing calling records, and repeatedly sought and obtained information that federal law does not permit to be disclosed without a judge’s approval.
Source: Declan McCullagh, CNET News.com, March 9, 2007
