Intel Launches a Digg to Rate Software Startups
Intel is asking for your help to find the next Google. In an effort to stay on top of the latest software trends and cool new startups, Intel on Monday made public a Digg-like voting site called CoolSW, for “cool software.” The site will tap the geek public for the most promising new software companies worldwide.
Source: Bryan Gardiner, Wired News, October 8, 2007
Biometrics wing their way into Gatwick
Gatwick airport is the latest UK airport to trial biometric fingerprinting technology to boost immigration security. The BioDev pilot has been running in the airport’s North Terminal since 18 September and is due to end in April next year. [...] The project is part of an overhaul of the UK’s border security. UKvisas, a joint Home Office and Foreign and Commonwealth Office unit that runs the UK’s visa service, is already collecting fingerprints from visa applicants in more than 100 countries around the world.
Source: Tim Ferguson, silicon.com, October 9, 2007
Solo commuters frustrated by snarled traffic have taken extreme measures to sneak into high-occupancy carpool lanes: costumed mannequins in passenger seats, dolls swaddled like babies–even dogs in bonnets. But a company called Vehicle Occupancy, based at Loughborough University, in Leicestershire, England, says that it has developed an infrared camera-mounted scanning system that foils 95 percent of such trickery.
Source: Tom Mashberg, Technology Review, October 11, 2007
Biometric sensors no dirtier than doorknobs, study finds
While biometric equipment is gaining popularity in a variety of applications, such as ensuring secure access to buildings, industries are finding that many users believe the devices are unsanitary and a potential source of germs that could cause illness. But a Purdue University study has found that while the platen glass surfaces of devices that scan fingerprints or hand geometry may look more unsanitary due to visible dirt and prints, they in fact harbor about the same amount of bacteria as a typical doorknob.
Source: Purdue University, October 10, 2007
New Scanner May Replace Metal Detectors
The federal government will begin testing a body-scanning machine that could eventually be used instead of the metal detectors passengers walk through at airports. Tests were scheduled to begin Thursday at Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport with passengers pulled out of the security line for secondary screening. Passengers may request the full-body scan — which blurs faces so the person being screened cannot be recognized — instead of the traditional pat-down used across the country. The new machine uses radio waves to detect foreign objects.
Source: Eileen Sullivan, The Associated Press, October 11, 2007
Quantum cryptography to secure ballots in Swiss election
Swiss officials are using quantum cryptography technology to protect voting ballots cast in the Geneva region of Switzerland during parliamentary elections to be held Oct. 21, marking the first time this type of advanced encryption will be used for election protection purposes. Still considered an area of advanced research, quantum cryptography uses photons to carry encryption keys to secure communications over fiber-optic lines and can automatically detect if anyone is trying to eavesdrop on a communications stream. For the Swiss ballot-collection process, the quantum cryptography system made by id Quantique will be used to secure the link between the central ballot-counting station in downtown Geneva and a government data center in the suburbs.
Source: Ellen Messmer, Network World, October 11, 2007
62 Days + Almost 3 Billion Pings + New Visualization Scheme = the First Internet Census Since 1982
Researchers at the University of Southern California Information Sciences Institute, one of the birthplaces of the Internet decades ago, have just completed and plotted a comprehensive census of all of the more 2.8 billion allocated addresses on the Internet — the first complete effort of its kind in more than two decades, they say.
[Note: You can find more details by looking at Plotting the Whole Internet. "Following on our visualizations of our census data of the Internet address space, we plotted the whole Internet at scale in October 2007. By ``at scale'' we mean one pixel is one address and every single address is shown. At 600 dots-per-inch (typical printer resolution), the plot turns out to be about 83 square feet (7.7 m2, about 9 feet or 2.8m on a side!)."]
Source: University of Southern California Information Sciences Institute, October 8, 2007
Intel Launches a Digg to Rate Software Startups
Intel is asking for your help to find the next Google. In an effort to stay on top of the latest software trends and cool new startups, Intel on Monday made public a Digg-like voting site called CoolSW, for “cool software.” The site will tap the geek public [...]
