Eco-Patent Commons shares earth-friendly tech
IBM on Monday will announce the creation of an Eco-Patents Commons — shared innovations geared at environmental sustainability — with the participation of Sony, Nokia, and Pitney Bowes. The Eco-Patent Commons will start with the donation into the public domain of 31 patents that cover everything from a manufacturing process that reduces volatile compounds to a natural coagulant used to purify industrial waste water.
Source: Martin LaMonica, CNET’s News Blog, January 13, 2008
FBI takes biometrics database proposal to U.K.
Police in the U.K. are in talks with the FBI about establishing an international biometric database for tracking down the world’s most wanted criminals and terrorists. The so-called “server in the sky” database would share criminals’ biometric data, such as fingerprints and iris scans, internationally. The Washington Post reported last month that the FBI is spending $1 billion to develop the world’s largest centralized biometrics database, a system the agency calls Next Generation Identification.
Source: Nick Heath, silicon.com, January 16, 2008
Pizza Hut rolls out nationwide mobile ordering
Pizza Hut has deployed a mobile ordering system that ratchets up the competition in the industry’s battle to sell more pizzas using the latest technology. The unit of Yum Brands this week introduced new cell phone services that let customers order from any of its 6,200 outlets nationwide via text message or the mobile Web.
Source: Reuters, January 17, 2008
Google: From ‘Don’t Be Evil’ to How to Do Good
Google unveiled nearly $30 million in new grants and investments, outlining how it will focus a massive philanthropic endeavor that erases the usual boundaries between the for-profit and nonprofit worlds. The first set of major five- to eight-year initiatives it will pursue includes efforts to create systems to help predict and prevent disease pandemics, to empower the poor with information about public services and to create jobs by investing in small- and mid-size businesses in the developing world.
Source: Kevin J. Delaney, The Wall Street Journal, January 18, 2008
Maps and street signs don’t work so well when you can’t see them. If you’re a blind person lost in most major cities, the best way to orient yourself is probably just to yell out, “Where am I?” — and hope someone hears you. But a small town in Italy is building an electronic navigational system so that blind residents and tourists will never have to ask, “Dove sono?”
Source: Morgen E. Peck, IEEE Spectrum, January 2008
British Laptop With Personal Data Stolen
A laptop containing the personal details of 600,000 new and prospective military recruits has been stolen, the Ministry of Defense said Friday, the latest in a series of government blunders over data. The laptop was stolen from a Royal Navy officer in the central city of Birmingham last week, a statement said. The amount of information held on each individual varied from just a name to full background details including passport numbers, insurance numbers and family background information.
Source: Tariq Panja, The Associated Press, January 18, 2008
Roughly five years after Internet users caught on, the bookshops are suddenly full of books about the user-generated content that “Web 2.0″ makes possible: blogs, Wikipedia, Facebook, and the rest. Well, you can forget them, because easily the world’s most profitable enabler of user-generated content opened the doors of its first superstore 50 years ago, in Almhult, Sweden.
Source: Tim Harford, for Slate, January 19, 2008
Credit issuer says data lost for 650,000 customers
A computer tape containing personal data of 650,000 customers of about 230 retailers including J.C. Penney is missing, credit card issuer GE Money said on Friday.
Source: Reuters, January 18, 2008
