1. Hands On With The New Apple iPhone
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/6260904.stm
This article is written by Ian Mackenzie and explains what the iPhone is and does. It tells readers about how the iPhone looks and feels and also the other applications in which it includes.
- Has a big glass touch screen and to avoid finger prints getting in the way it has a bright back light so as not to see them.
- Although it is heavy enough so you know it is there it is lighter than some of the current Windows smart phones such as the blackberry.
- All the applications open and close easily with no pause, switching from landscape to portrait just as easily too.
- There is a small on screen keyboard which can slow you down because using your thumbs you often hit the wrong keys, so its easier to use index fingers which is therefore slower.
- Some videos are not able to play via the Internet on the iPhone.
- It supports POP3, IMAP and Exchange servers for e-mail and Internet browsers can be zoomed in and out by the ‘pinch’ technique making it easier to read the righting.
- 2.5G EDGE took 2minuets to load the yahoo homepage.
- The iPhone does not have any multimedia messages or voice dialling.
- No video recording and the camera is not of a very good quality.
- Takes a while to make a phone call as you have to push a number of buttons rather than just a simple call button.
Quotes:
-”Apple’s claim that the iPhone is five years ahead of any other mobile is nonsense, in terms of actual tech specifications. In particular, the antiquated data system lets it down badly. However, as a user experience it is probably about 10 years ahead.”
-”If Apple could sort out the camera data speed and keyboard the iPhone would still not be perfect, but it wouldn’t be far off.”
-”The iPhone may have been over-hyped in some respects, but the operation is every but as good as promised.”
2. Camera ‘looks’ through clothing
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7287135.stm
A new camera has been invented where you are able to see through clothing and see any explosives, drugs, hidden weapons etc, as long as it is within 25meters away. It is being aimed to be put in action especially at airports, train stations and other public spaces where people could be at risk. This article explains how it works and what it is.
- Based on T-ray system which is often used by astronomers studying dying stars.
- It does not reveal body detail although it can see through clothes and does not expose people to any form of harmful radiation.
- Exploits terahertz rays, otherwise known as T-rays. These can pass through clothing and body tissue etc, but are blocked by metal and water.
- The image that is shown from this device shows you as a ‘glowing object’ where different types of materials are different colours, leaving outlines of the object, therefore revealing what it is.
- Surface ‘anotomical’ effects can not be seen, only a silhouette is shown.
- There have been previous cameras made like this one but the T5000 model is the first one that works indoors and out.
- Astronomers use these such cameras too see through dust in case to reveil what lies beyond
- This technology exploits some technology originally developed at the Rutherford Appleton Labotory in Oxfordshire, owned by the government.
- Other devices like this one are used to probe pharmosutical compounds so as to make sur they are safe.
- It is passive, therefore it recives the rays given off by people, rather than sendingout rays to them.
Quotes:
-”Has already been sold to the Dubai Mercantile Exchange and Canary Wharf in London.”
-”If I were to look at you in terahertz you would appear to glow like a light bulb and different objects glow less brightly or more brightly.”
-”The system does not involve any of the harmful radiation associated with traditional X-ray security screening.”
3. Why the Futer is in Your Hands.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7250465.stm
This article discusses how the smart phones are going to replace laptops soon, as they are developing from voice communication to a multimedia computer. It tells you what the mobile phones of today include with them.
- Camera phones and music phones are more popular making Nokia the worlds best selling in camera’s and mp3 devices.
- Taking over from individual media products such as cameras, mp3s, computers as the phones are starting to incorporate all the qualities of these but into one small object that can be easily carried where ever it is needed.
- GPS enabled phones sold 35million.
- Nokia’s N96 and NTTDoCoMo’s 905 series have the same power as a laptop from 2000.
- The Nvidia’s APX 2500 chip includes enough 3D graphics acceleration to run Quake 3, which is a PC game from 1999. This is running it on a mobile phone not on a PC.
- These phones are taking over from laptops as people would prefer to be able to carry it around where ever they might need it without any hassel.
- Unlike a laptop these phones only run for a few hours if they are being used constantly whereas laptops run for much longer.
- 3D graphics on these phones are improving and becoming standard to have on them.
- Handset owners are begining to expect to have some of the internet experiences that they have on their PCs on their phones as a norm.
- Everything that can be used on the PC is being used on this phone as well as the music, camera and basic phone abilities, such as calling and txting.
Quotes:
“The future of the internet and computing applications is not going to be in the home or at the office; it’s going to be mobile.”
“When we look at what is collapsing on to these devices and people’s expectations with their experiences on single-use specialized devices there is going to be rising expectations.”
“Sales of smartphones are expected to overtake those of laptops in the next 12 to 18 months as the mobile phone completes its transition from voice communications device to multimedia computer.”
4. Casual games make a serious impact.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7301374.stm
Game first known as Diamond Mind but more comonly known as Bejeweled which does not need many hours of playing time as some other games require.It can be played for just 15minutes at a time. This article discuses what the game involves.
- It is being called a casual game as you do not have to play on it for long periods of time.
- More than 10 million copies of Bejeweled has been sold and the game has been downloaded more than 150 million times.
- Players spend up to 600 million hours playing its online games every year.
- The stellar growth of casual games is making that much less true than it used to be.
- Figures gathered by the Casual Games Association suggest the industry is growing by 20% year on year and in 2007 the market for these titles was worth $2.25bn.
- Games for the hard core take time to master, soak up huge amounts of time, are only on consoles or high-end PCs and are expensive.
- The biggest casual gaming success has been Nintendo’s Wii which in 2007 became the must-have console largely due to its appeal to the young and old who were never likely to spend time with a first-person shooter.
- Increasing numbers of casual games allow players to take on others, compare scores and strategies.
- The game focuses on creating rows of matching jewels.
- Social and technological forces have conspired to bring about the rising interest in casual titles.
Quotes:
“Popcap players are 65% female and 70% of them are over the age of 30.”
“Broadband penetration is one of the big drivers on the industry and the other is the advance in the quality of Flash technology itself.”
“They do not seem, on the surface, to be that hard to make, but it’s a lot harder than most people think.”
5. The offline cost of an online life.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7300403.stm
This article is about an alternative search engine to the regular ones that people ues. It explains how ‘Blackle’ consumes less energy than a site such as google, as rather than having a white background it has a black background, therefore using less energy. This article explains how it works and why it is better.
- The black background of Backle uses less energy as the black pixles used, use less energy than the white pixles used on many other search engines such as google, therefore Blackle saves energy.
- The Australian company who have created Blackle believes that by changing the small things like this it will make a big difference, as by using this site instead of white ones it reduces our energy use, limiting our CO2 out put helping to stop globle warming.
- By turning off a few million white pixles it might not make a measurable difference.
- It depends on the type of screen that is being used by the search engine user, as the old style CRT monitors it makes a conciderable difference to their battery life ect. but for the flat screen, or laptop users there is minimal difference.
- Blackle might cut down on few kilo’s of carbon but only for the few heavy google users who happened to have old style PC screens. This however does not cut down on the carbon from the laptop users which is far more than the old screens.
- What a few individuals do will not make a real difference but what millions do will, a more energy sufficiant site which could be used world wide, like Blackle, could make a difference if people start to use it more than others such as Google.
- Wikipedia’s home page has thirteen images that must be fetched over the network every time the page is viewed, using far more energy than is needed.
- IBM has been adding energy-monitoring technology to its mainframe computers, letting those with a System Z9 have access to what it calls a ‘mainframe gas gauge’.
- Some users use Network Time Protocol, a standard way of sending out a time signal, when on their computer/laptop. If a Network Energy Protocol that lets servers and services report their electricity consumption in real time was to be developed, users might change their usage patterns.
- Changine usage patterns would have a lot more impact than symbolically turning off a few white pixels as Blackle does.
Quotes:
“Perhaps we should develop a Network Energy Protocol that lets servers and services report their electricity consumption in real time, so I can change my usage patterns.”
“Thus, it appears that display color is a significant determinant of on power for CRTs, but not for LCDs.”
“The next time you want to search for something on the web, try going to www.blackle.com instead of your usual search engine.”
6. Spam Blights e-mail 15 years on.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7322615.stm
This article is about how spam affects are internet usage of e-mail, what it is and what it does, or can do. It talks about how spam is used for hijackers to hijack your e-mail, usually on home computers, and how it affects your intenet usage.
- Over 90% of all e-mails are spam.
- Spam can slow down your internet connection and increases your chances of getting a virus.
- Bulk mail is usually used to send spam messages.
- There is an increasing risk to e-mail so e-mail is becoming a less reliable way to communicate.
-The ternm spam became a common used phrase in 1970 after a monty python sketch.
- Most spam or bulk e-mail is sent from the Chinese and Russian rejions.
- About 200 spammers worldwide are responsible for about 80% of all spam.
- It is unlikely that spam will ever be stopped completly.
- Most spam mail is sent through home computers which have been hijacked and are used as ‘botnets’, send out spam mail automatically.
- The first unsolicited bulk e-mail was sent by a marketing representative at computer firm Dec on 3 May 1978, when he e-mailed every West Coast user on the Arpanet, the original building block of the internet.
Quotes:
” I don’t think it’s realistic to believe we will never receive spam.” – Richard Cox.
“Years had been taken up trying to persuade government to ban spam.” – Richard Cox.
“Spam is a real life arms race.” – Mark Sunner.
7. Silicon Chips bend into Shape.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7313203.stm
This article explains what this silicon chip does what it can be used for. Is explains how it is a flexible chip that which will make way for a new generation of flexible electronic devices.
- These new stretchy curcuits can be used to build advance brain implants, used for health monitoring and in new smart clothing.
- Consist of concertina-like folds of ultra-thin silicon bonded to sheets of rubber.
- In 2005, the team demonstrated a stretchable form of single-crystal silicon.
- It is believed that the new research is an “important step”.
- There are four different layers to the silicon chip, each made from different materials, allowing it to be more flexible than any before.
- Because of the certain components used in the making of this chip it allows the chip to be stretched and bend in many different directions.
- The team has developed a method that can produce complete circuits just one and a half microns (millionths of a metre) thick, hundreds of times thinner than conventional silicon circuits found in PCs.
- The depth and relative position of the different layers, including chromium, gold and silicon, is crucial.
- Following the deposition of the circuits, the silicon base is discarded to reveal delicate slivers of circuitry held in plastic.
- Some people are investigating wheather an ‘organic’ version can be made using electronic paper, these are thought to be able to be used in planes.
Quotes:
“We had to figure out how to make the entire circuit in an ultra-thin format.” – John Rogers.
“In many cases you’d like to integrate electronics conformably in a variety of ways in the human body – but the human body does not have the shape of a silicon wafer.” – John Rogers.
“In some applications, stretchable and foldable integrated circuits may be the only choice.” – Zhenqiang Ma
8. Google warns on ‘unsafe’ web-sites’.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/5251742.stm
This article explains how google has started to warn its users of unsafe sites where it is more likely for you to catch viruses. Google does not stop you from entering the site, it just gives you a warning that it is ‘unsafe’ and then you can either proceed or you can return back to the previous page.
- A warning will pop up for users if they have clicked on a site which is known to host spyware or other malicious software.
- This helps to cut down on and warns people about any unwanted ads, spy on web habits or areas that steal personal data.
- The idea is that this will advise and help to pursuade people away from certain sites that try to spam users computers, and send viruses. Google however does not have the power to stop you from entering the site, so you can still enter after the warning should you wish.
- Prevents people from blaming google for viruses or spam, as google is the site warning you which sites do this.
- Google, PC maker Lenovo and Sun set up this initiative in January 2006 to identify dangerous software and the websites that try to trick people into installing these malicious programs.
- It was found, that on average 4-6% of sites have harmful content on them, in May 2006.
- For some keywords, such as “free screensavers” the number of potentially dangerous sites leapt to 64%.
- Another company ScanSafe has also created the Scandoo search engine which overlays its warnings on results produced via Google and MSN.
- Some key words which have been found to have a high percentage of potentially dangerous sites are; free screensavers, bearshare, screensavers, winmx, limewire, lime wire, free ringtones.
- Warnings are quite vague at the moment but as more research is done into the dangerous sites, the warnings will become more detailed as more is known about the type of danger to your computer they cause.
Quotes:
“Most dodgy websites that have spyware or are infected with viruses come through search because they are the ones that people do not know as well and find through searching.” – Eldar Tuvey.
9. Hackers exploit poor website code.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7345990.stm
In this article it explains how if web designers make certain mistakes it makes it easier for hackers to hack into the site and exploit it. It explains how the hackers can do this and why it is important not to become a victim.
- Many of the loopholes left in the code created for websites have been known about for almost a decade say the security researchers.
- According to Symantec the number of sites vulnerable in this way almost doubled during the last half of 2007.
- The attack that a malicious hacker can carry out via these web code vulnerabilities is known as cross-site scripting (abbreviated as XSS).
- An XSS vulnerability could, for instance, allow attackers to steal the login credentials of a visitor to a site.
- In its most recent Internet Security Threat Report Symantec identified 11,253 specific XSS vulnerabilities in the last six months of 2007. Six months earlier the count stood at 6,961.
- These hackers are becoming more popular and therefore becomeing a bigger threate to the internet world as sites are begining to wright more of their scripts themselves so that users can get more out of the sites.
- The same mistakes were being made in this custom code years after they were first discovered.
- Hackers are improving their skills and finding new and better ways to hack into these sites with mistakes in their scripting creating loopholes.
- The hackers are getting harder to stop as they are becoming more comon and using more complex methods.
- It is recomended that scripts are tested before they are put out there so to try and prevent mistakes being made.
Quotes:
“I do not see trends slowing this down” – Chris Wysopal.
“There are a lot more websites out there that are prone to this. It’s a much bigger proposition to make a safe website than it is to patch a browser.” – Mr Hogan.
“Over time attackers have figured out better and more interesting things to do with cross-site scripting.” – Chris Wysopal.
10. Cyber Carpet opens way to Pompeii
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7346325.stm
This article talks about the new multi directional tredmil, cyber carpet, which has been created in Pompeii, explains how it works and how it gives the affect of natural walking eventhough you are staying in the same place.
- The platform, called CyberCarpet, is made up of several belts which form an endless plane along two axes.
- The treadmill is a motion platform giving the impression of natural walking in any direction.
- The platform gives a walking area of 4.5m by 4.5m and moves fast enough to allow jogging at about two metres per second.
- This CyberCarpet is made up from twenty five conventional treadmills that move in one direction, adjacent to the direction of the chain is pulling.
- Omni-directional treadmills are not new and have been in development for many years, including work done by the US military.
- The belts and the chain work independently so the “walker” can be recentred on the platform if he were to accelerate from a point towards the edge of the platform.
- The researchers have been working on a tracking system which lets “walkers” dispense with the type of suits used in Hollywood films for motion capture.
- Scientists at the Max Planck Institute have combined the platform with virtual reality headsets to give the impression of walking or even running around 3D worlds.
- It is believed that the technology can be used in gaming, education, architecture and planning, disaster planning and training, as well as medical rehabilitation.
- The platform weighs 11 tonnes and a series of 40 kilowatt motors can move a mass of seven tonnes.
Quotes:
“This is the first omni-directional platform that allows near natural walking.” – Dr Marc Ernst.
“We are using virtual reality to study human behaviour.” – Dr Marc Ernst.
“It feels relatively natural. You do feel the acceleration of the belts. But you don’t need any harness – we wear them for safety in case someone was to fall. But no-one ever has.” – Dr Marc Ernst.
