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Link for 2008-12-06

2008-12-07T02:07:00.000-08:00

Facebook hit by computer virus called Koobface - TopNews

Facebook hit by computer virus called Koobface
TopNews - 5 hours ago
A computer virus dubbed 'Koobface' is being spread through the messaging system of social networking sites, like Facebook and MySpace, posing to the users a threat similar to other malware attacks over the years.
Latest Facebook Attack Stems ... InternetNews.com
Facebook Users: Beware Of Koobface Virus North Country Gazette
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all 226 news articles

Link for 2008-12-01

2008-12-01T19:33:00.000-08:00

US recession 'began last year'

via BBC News | News Front Page | World Edition on 12/1/08

The US recession began in December 2007, according to the National Bureau of Economic Research.

Link for 2008-11-30

2008-11-30T20:50:00.000-08:00

Fipke surprised by economic crisis (Kelowna)

via Castanet.net - Most Recent Stories on 11/30/08

The man who is arguably one of Kelowna's wealthiest residents, says the economy will turn around, but not anytime soon. Charles Fipke, who became famous and filthy rich after founding the first diamond mine in Canada, says he was surprised to see the world economy take a dive. "I'm really surpri...

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Link for 2008-11-30

2008-11-30T20:44:00.000-08:00

Biggest Battle Yet For Social Networks: You, Your Identity And Your Data On The Open...

via TechCrunch by Michael Arrington on 11/30/08

Today's the day that Facebook makes their big press push for their Facebook Connect service, which was first announced last May. The NY Times has a story giving a broad overview of Connect as well as competing services from MySpace (Data Availability) and Google (Friend Connect).

All three services are platforms for third party sites (Digg, Twitter, Citisearch, CBS, whatever) to let users sign in via their favorite social network instead of the normal approach. Some profile information flows with the sign in, which the sites can keep for a period of time. And activity that occurs on the site - Twitters written, Digg stories voted on, restaurant reviews on Citysearch, etc.) can optionally flow back to the user's activity stream.

What the third party sites get out of these services: easy sign in for users, particularly new users. They can also use the profile data to help users create accounts at their site with little data input. The activity stream information published on the social networks includes links back to their sites. And one of the most interesting features, for Facebook Connect partners: sites can request friend lists from Facebook to help them make more connections on their own services. Digg CEO Jay Adelson recently gushed over the potential of Facebook Connect for his service.

Facebook also gives Connect partners most of the same tools as their application developers to promote their services via the news feed, invites, etc.

But the real value goes to the social networks. These services make users begin to think about their identity in terms of their MySpace profile, or Facebook login as they use it to sign into their favorite services. That makes it even more likely the users will maintain their profiles on those services, add friends, etc.

MySpace in particular wants to own user identities. Their MySpace profile is their name online, which is why they've embraced OpenID so completely in recent months. Data Availability and OpenID are two parts to a single strategy.

Facebook is probably less concerned with identity - there is no branded URL for users, for example. But they do want to own the definitive profile for an individual and, more importantly, their social graph. Knowing who you are and who your friends are is the key to their yet-unrealized business model.

And the biggest win of all is this free flow of data back to the social networks, which quite nicely fills out a user's profile for advertising purposes.

Facebook is moving ahead alone with Connect, using proprietary standards for login and data sharing. They've also prohibited Google from trying to get in the middle of things with their Friend Connect service. MySpace, by contrast, is using mostly open standards in their approach, and is working closely with Google to make sure the services work properly together.

The battle for partners is intense. MySpace announced Twitter as a launch partner, but rumor is that Twitter is actually integrating with Facebook first (there's no reason they can't offer both, and they probably will). MySpace also announced Yahoo and eBay as launch partners. To date, though, they've only launched with Flixster and Eventful.

Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors

Quote of the Day

2008-11-17T15:39:00.001-08:00

“I have been impressed with the urgency of doing. Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Being willing is not enough; we must do.”

- Leonardo da Vinci

Losing Face

2008-11-09T00:19:00.000-08:00

From The Economist print edition:

AS WELL as embracing blogs, firms have been exploiting social networks such as Facebook and MySpace to get their messages to a broader audience. But although they have the potential to be useful marketing tools, such networks can also be a source of damaging publicity, as British Airways (BA) and Virgin Atlantic have discovered to their cost.

On October 31st Virgin fired 13 of its cabin crew who had posted derogatory comments about its safety standards and some of its passengers on a Facebook forum. Among other things, crew members joked that some Virgin planes were infested with cockroaches and described customers as “chavs”, a disparaging British term for people with flashy bad taste. On November 3rd BA began investigating the behaviour of several employees who had described some passengers as “smelly” and “annoying” in Facebook postings.

Some airline customers may not be fragrant paragons of exquisite taste, but attacking them online is a public-relations (PR) disaster that raises the question of whether the two firms have done enough to educate staff about acceptable use of the internet. BA says employees sign a policy that forbids them from posting information about the firm online without specific authorisation. But it clearly needs to do more to reinforce that message. Virgin points out that it has several internal channels through which staff can vent frustrations. But if these were effective, why would employees feel the need to moan on Facebook?
Communications specialists say the rise of Facebook, MySpace and Twitter make it all the more important to reiterate online guidelines frequently. “Anything you now say online is amplified by these services,” warns Aedhmar Hynes, the boss of Text 100, a PR firm.

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Quote of the Day

2008-11-05T23:42:00.000-08:00

"We have proved that the true strength of our nation comes not from the scale of our wealth but from the power of our ideals - opportunity, democracy, liberty and hope."

- Barack Obama, Election 2008 Victory Address

Google Blogger hit with Storm virus

2007-08-30T22:45:00.000-07:00

From CBC News:

The malicious Storm virus is back, this time infecting Google's Blogger website through fake postings that trick people into download software that can take over their computers.

Hackers are then mining infected computers for valuable data, or using them for other attacks.

The blog entries have the same text as that used by the Storm spam e-mail earlier this year that lured people into clicking on links that then infected their computers. Security researchers say the virus, which originated in January as spam promising information about a winter storm in northern Europe, has since infected 1.3 million machines.

The fake blog entries use text such as, "Dude don't send that stuff to my home e-mail …" or "OMG, what are you thinking," while some include links that supposedly lead to YouTube videos. Other entries claim to be looking for software testers or present themselves as links to digital greeting cards.

Google has not yet commented on the attack.

Alex Eckelberry, president of security firm Sunbelt Software, first noticed the latest attack and blogged about it on Monday. He could not explain how it happened, but guessed that hackers used Blogger's ability to send e-mail through a posting.

"What it really shows to me is how pernicious these guys are and they're indefatigable in trying to get into every place," he told The Register. "This is a voracious, voracious worm. I don't think anybody in malware research has seen anything like Storm."

No Last.fm participation?

2007-06-25T00:20:00.000-07:00

Duncan Riley writing for TechCrunch:

The SaveNetRadio coalition will be holding a National Day of Silence June 26 to draw attention to an impending royalty rate increase that could lead to the shutdown of most of the US Internet radio industry.
Most large online music and radio providers are participating including Yahoo, Real (Rhapsody), Accuradio, Live365, MTV and Pandora. Conspicuous in its absence is the now CBS owned Last.fm.
To date there appears to be no comment at all from Last.fm, including no response to questions by users on the Last.fm forums.

On the surface it seems strange that CBS/ Last.fm wouldn’t be participating. Last.fm is obliged to pay royalties in the same way that any online music streaming service is obliged to. CBS is an investor in TargetPoint, a company that allows advertisers to customize online radio ads, pinpointing specific demographics and locations that would be affected by any industry down-turn. Is it perhaps a case of CBS deciding to let the competition die? CBS radio stations stream online and unlike many others in the business CBS has deep pockets and a much larger advertiser pool from which to cover costs under the new royalty scheme.
No matter what the reasoning, Last.fm’s failure to participate in the National Day of Silence runs the risk of causing a backlash. Many early adopters who are also Last.fm users will not be pleased to see a company they champion being a poor corporate citizen by failing to support the online music streaming industry.

Warnings of internet overload

2007-06-18T01:26:00.000-07:00

Spencer Kelly writing for BBC News:

Back in the early 90s, those of us that were online were just sending text e-mails of a few bytes each, traffic across the main US data lines was estimated at a few terabytes a month, steadily doubling every year.
But the mid 90s saw the arrival of picture-rich websites, and the invention of the MP3. Suddenly each net user wanted megabytes of pictures and music, and the monthly traffic figure exploded.
For the next few years we saw more steady growth with traffic again roughly doubling every year.
But since 2003, we have seen another change in the way we use the net. The YouTube generation want to stream video, and download gigabytes of data in one go.
"In one day, YouTube sends data equivalent to 75 billion e-mails; so it's clearly very different," said Phil Smith, head of technology and corporate marketing at Cisco Systems.
"The network is growing up, is starting to get more capacity than it ever had, but it is a challenge.
"Video is real-time, it needs to not have mistakes or errors. E-mail can be a little slow. You wouldn't notice if it was 11 seconds rather than 10, but you would notice that on a video."
Perhaps unsurprisingly, every year someone says the internet is going to collapse under the weight of the traffic.
Looking at the figures, that seems a reasonable prediction.

Internal changes to prevent another Blackberry outage

2007-04-20T21:22:00.000-07:00

Wojtek Dabrowski writing for Reuters, via Yahoo! Canada News:

Research In Motion is making internal changes to ensure that a massive outage of its BlackBerry e-mail service like the one that hit thousands of North American users this week doesn't happen again, its co-chief executive said on Friday.
"It's very rare that we have these events," Jim Balsillie told Reuters in an interview.

"I think it's pretty likely that the systems are in place that this kind of thing, as incredibly unlikely as it is to happen, is all the more unlikely to happen again," he said.

The outage, which hit Tuesday night and lasted well into Wednesday for some, left business executives, lawyers, politicians and others addicted to the "CrackBerry" without uninterrupted on-the-go e-mail access, which has been the BlackBerry's main draw.

Some fumed, accusing the company of being less than forthcoming about the cause of the outage and what it was doing to address it on Wednesday morning. Balsillie said that the top priority was restoring service.

"It wasn't a capacity issue, it wasn't a security issue. It was an outage overnight when there was an upgrade," he said.

Still, capacity was a concern raised by at least one analyst, who questioned whether Waterloo, Ontario-based RIM has enough infrastructure to handle the torrid pace of its growth.

The company has about 8 million subscribers for various models of its BlackBerry device. It added more than 1 million in the last quarter alone and plans to add more than that in the three months ending June 2.

RIM said in an e-mailed statement late Thursday night that the cause of the outage was a new storage feature that had not been properly tested. It "triggered a compounding series of interaction errors" in RIM's operations.

Environment Minister defends Conservative position on Kyoto

2007-04-20T19:51:00.000-07:00

CTV.ca news staff writes:

Environment Minister John Baird shot back at critics Friday, calling the Conservative government's position towards the Kyoto Protocol a "balanced approach."

"What we want to do is take a balanced approach, an approach where we can actually reduce greenhouse gas emissions... in a way that helps our environment and preserves Canadian jobs," Baird told CTV's Canada AM.

The Senate environmental committee is currently considering a bill put forward by Liberal MP Pablo Rodriquez that would force the government to comply with the Kyoto targets.

On Thursday, Baird was accused of using scare tactics when he painted a grim depiction of the economic mayhem that Canada would have to endure if it were to comply with the Kyoto Protocol.
Meanwhile, David Suzuki is set to meet with Baird on Friday to hand over a petition bearing the names of 30,000 people who consider the environment a top priority.

"Canadians, I believe, are far ahead of the political posturing that we see," the respected environmental activist told reporters Friday. "They're not afraid to pay more and what they want is action."

While Baird said yesterday that meeting the Kyoto carbon emissions targets would "manufacture a recession" for Canada, Suzuki says other economists have estimated the cost at one per cent of gross national product.

He said ignoring global warming will cost more than both world wars put together.

Google 411 for phones

2007-04-07T22:02:00.000-07:00

Eric Auchard of Reuters writes, via Yahoo! Canada News:

Computer Web search leader Google Inc. on Friday stepped up an experiment to use speech recognition on telephones so consumers can ask for local information, in a challenge to directory assistance providers.
The company is inviting U.S. callers to dial 1-800-GOOG-411 (1-800-466-4411) from any phone to test a voice-activated service free-of-charge that it calls Google Voice Local Search, which is available on its experimental Google Labs site.

"Using this service, you get fast access to the same local information you'd find on Google Maps," an explanation of the new experiment said on the Google Labs site. "You don't need a computer, you don't need an Internet connection, and you don't even need to use your cellphone keypad," it said.

Details are available at http://labs.google.com/goog411/.

Google's experiment comes weeks after Microsoft Corp. agreed to acquire voice search firm Tellme Networks, in a deal sources said is valued at more than $800 million. The transaction is Microsoft's largest acquisition in five years.

Improving quality and falling costs of voice search technology are enticing Internet players Google, Microsoft, and rival Yahoo Inc. to expand beyond pay-per-click Web search advertising business into pay-per-call marketing.

Where do creative people get their inspiration?

2007-04-07T19:46:00.000-07:00

From The Observer:

Reverie is crucial to the creative mind. And although this predominantly comes down to nurture over nature, creativity is lost without an instinctive ability to access free-floating mental states. The myth goes that creatives either lie back and let the muse come to them, or force it out through hard work and lengthy trial and error. The reality is somewhere between the two - a combination of inspiration and evaluation, of being able to let an idea come to you and then crafting it into shape. When AE Housman walked home after a liquid lunch at the Spaniards Inn on Hampstead Heath, three stanzas popped fully formed into his head. It took him another 12 months, he said, to finally come up with the fourth stanza.

This is a classic story of creativity, where at some unpredictable moment the unconscious serves something up to you, which is pretty well formed, and anecdotal evidence shows that the majority of people get their best ideas when they are off guard and least expect it.
In the cognitive science of consciousness, there is a lot of interest in what people call the 'fringe of the mind', an idea started by William James, the father of psychology, who in 1890 wrote about the 'reinstatement of the vague' - the ability to be interested in ideas that are not yet fully formed. Creative people have a more intimate relationship with the fringes of their mind, and consequently are able to catch the gleam of an idea as it flashes across the corner of their consciousness. Ted Hughes was a great fisherman and liked to use the metaphor of fishing for the creative process. He believed that in order to be creative you have to be able to 'catch' concepts as they come up from the unconscious. If we can't do that, he believed, then 'our minds lie in us like fish in the pond of a man who cannot fish'.
Creativity is mainly learnt. And while there is an element of nature involved, it predominantly comes down to nurture - a way of thinking that is picked up from parents or the people around you. Timely encouragement, of course plays, its part, along with finding an area of interest that really gets under your skin.
Creative people do, however, intuitively know the value of alternating the rhythms of work: when to let the mind wander, when to get down to hard work and when to put a problem on the back burner and leave the subconscious to mull it over. This is a crucial flexibility of mind demonstrated by the way creative people, even during periods of intense activity, manage to create little holes for themselves where they will instinctively take the mini breaks they need to let ideas come to them.
Time out feeds the quietness of mind that is essential to creativity.

Mind-wandering study

2007-03-20T13:03:00.001-07:00

Malcolm Ritter of The Associated Press writes, via CBC News:

Researchers are studying a pervasive psychological phenomenon in which oh man we've got to finish doing the taxes this weekend ... C'mon, admit it. Your train of thought has derailed like that many times. It's just mind-wandering. We all do it, and surprisingly often, whether we're struggling to avoid it or not.
Mainstream psychology hasn't paid much attention to this common mental habit. But a spate of new studies is chipping away at its mysteries and scientists say the topic is beginning to gain visibility.

Someday, such research may turn up ways to help students keep their focus on textbooks and lectures, and drivers to keep their minds on the road. It may reveal ways to reap payoffs from the habit.

And it might shed light on attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, which can include an unusually severe inability to focus that causes trouble in multiple areas of life.

More generally, scientists say, mind-wandering is worth studying because it's just too common to ignore.

Michael Kane, a psychologist at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, sampled the thoughts of students at eight random times a day for a week. He found that on average, they were not thinking about what they were doing 30 percent of the time.

Century-old mathematics puzzle solved

2007-03-20T12:59:00.001-07:00

From CBC News:

An international team of mathematicians and computer scientists announced on Monday they have mapped out a 248-dimension mathematical structure that had confounded the world's top number-crunchers for 120 years.

The calculation of the structure, known as E8, takes about 60 gigabytes of space on a computer, or enough space to hold about 15,000 songs in MP3 format. It took 18 researchers from the United States and Europe four years to produce the E8 calculation and 77 hours for a U.S. supercomputer called Sage 77 to provide the solution.

Solving E8 is seen as a major step in the study of symmetry, a mathematical field important to our understanding of the origins of the universe.

E8 is an example of a Lie group. Lie groups were invented by the 19th-century Norwegian mathematician Sophus Lie to define objects that have the underlying characteristics of symmetry. Spheres, cylinders and cones are familiar examples of symmetrical shapes that belong to Lie groups.

E8 is the most complex Lie group known, a 453,060 by 453,060 matrix that exists only in abstract mathematics. Because of its large size, solving its structure was not possible until computing power could improve, according to Jeffrey Adams, the project leader and a mathematics professor at the University of Maryland.

All your phones ringing at once

2007-03-19T12:18:00.001-07:00

David Pogue of The New York Times writes:

If you have only one telephone with one phone number, this column won’t be of any interest to you. Skip to another article, you eccentric you.
But first, count your blessings. Millions of people have more than one phone number these days — home, work, cellular, hotel room, vacation home, yacht — and with great complexity comes great hassle. You have to check multiple answering machines. You miss calls when people try to reach you on your cell when you’re at home (or the other way around). You send around e-mail messages at work that say, “On Thursday from 5 to 8:30, I’ll be on my cell; for the rest of the weekend, call me at home.”
And when you switch your job, cellphone carrier or home city, you have to notify everyone you know that you have new phone numbers.
A new service called GrandCentral, now in its final weeks of public beta testing, solves all of these problems. It’s a rather brilliant melding of cellphone and the Internet.
Its motto, “One number for life,” pretty much says it all. At GrandCentral.com, you choose a new, single, unified phone number (more on this in a moment). You hand it out to everyone you know, instructing them to delete all your old numbers from their Rolodexes.
From now on, whenever somebody dials your new uninumber, all of your phones ring simultaneously, like something out of “The Lawnmower Man.”
No longer will anyone have to track you down by dialing each of your numbers in turn. No longer does it matter if you’re home, at work or on the road. Your new GrandCentral phone number will find you.
As a bonus, all messages now land in a single voice mail box. You can listen to them in any of three ways. First, you can dial in from any phone (a text message arrives on your cellphone to let you know when you have voice mail). If you call in from your cellphone, you don’t even have to enter your password first.

The new bedouins

2007-03-12T01:19:00.001-07:00

Dan Fost of the San Francisco Chronicle writes:

A new breed of worker, fueled by caffeine and using the tools of modern technology, is flourishing in the coffeehouses of San Francisco. Roaming from cafe to cafe and borrowing a name from the nomadic Arabs who wandered freely in the desert, they've come to be known as "bedouins."
San Francisco's modern-day bedouins are typically armed with laptops and cell phones, paying for their office space and Internet access by buying coffee and muffins.
"In 'Lawrence of Arabia,' the bedouins always felt like they were on the warpath. They had greater cause," said Niall Kennedy, a 27-year-old San Franciscan who quit his day job at Microsoft Corp. to run his own Web company, Patrick Media, out of cafes and a rented desk. "At a startup, you're always on the go, plowing ahead, with some higher cause driving you."
San Francisco's bedouins see themselves changing the nature of the workplace, if not the world at large. They see large companies like General Motors laying off workers, contributing to insecurity. And at the same time, they see the Internet providing the tools to start companies on the cheap. In the Bedouin lifestyle, they are free to make their own rules.
"The San Francisco coffeehouse is the new Palo Alto garage," declares Kevin Burton, 30, who runs his Internet startup Tailrank without renting offices. "It's where all the innovation is happening."

Cell phones hospital safe

2007-03-12T01:11:00.000-07:00

Reuters writes, via Yahoo! Canada News:

Calls made on cell phones do not affect hospital medical devices, U.S. researchers said on Friday, but store anti-theft alarms might make implanted heart devices misfire.
Tests at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota showed normal use of cell phones, also called mobile phones, caused no noticeable interference with patient care equipment, they said.

But a portable CD player caused an abnormal electrocardiographic (ECG) reading when a patient used it near one of the leads of the device, according to one of several reports in the March issue of Mayo Clinic Proceedings.

And at least two reports suggest that anti-theft devices set up near the doors of retail stores can cause implantable rhythm devices such as pacemakers and defibrillators to malfunction.

Most hospitals forbid the use of cell phones.

Asian air pollution altering clouds

2007-03-12T00:56:00.000-07:00

Via FuturePundit:

Severe pollution from the Far East is almost certainly affecting the weather near you, says a Texas A&M University researcher who has studied the problem and has published a landmark paper on the topic in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Renyi Zhang, professor of atmospheric sciences at Texas A&M and lead author of the paper, says the study is the first of its kind that provides indisputable evidence that man-made pollution is adversely affecting the storm track over the Pacific Ocean, a major weather event in the northern hemisphere during winter. The project was funded by the National Science Foundation and NASA.

Zhang says the culprit is easy to detect: pollution from industrial and power plants in China and India. Both countries have seen huge increases in their economies, which means more large factories and power plants to sustain such growth. All of these emit immense quantities of pollution – much of it soot and sulfate aerosols – into the atmosphere, which is carried by the prevailing winds over the Pacific Ocean and eventually worldwide.

Using satellite imagery and computer models, Zhang says that in roughly the last 20 years or so, the amount of deep convective clouds in this area increased from 20 to 50 percent, suggesting an intensified storm track in the Pacific.

Early switch to daylight savings time

2007-03-10T21:54:00.000-08:00

Castanet writes:

British Columbians are reminded that daylight saving time will start this
Sunday, March 11, and end Nov. 4, 2007.

"These extra four weeks of daylight saving time will ensure that British
Columbia remains synchronized with other Canadian provinces and our
biggest trading partner, the United States," Attorney General Wally
Oppal said. "The extra daylight in the evening is welcome, according to
the overwhelming response we received to our public consultation, and so
is the small but measurable decrease in energy usage."

Exceptions will be areas that have historically chosen to observe
different time zones. The Peace River region does not observe daylight
saving time, so its clocks will not change. The East Kootenay region
observes mountain time and will continue to synchronize its clocks with
Alberta.

The provincial regulation changing the dates British Columbia observes
daylight saving time was approved in 2006 and took effect Jan. 1, 2007.

The quest for the source of universal mass

2007-03-09T22:18:00.001-08:00

From The Economist print edition:

BUMBLEBEES cannot do it. Fly, that is. Or so physics is said to have shown. That the insects routinely become airborne demonstrates the shortcomings of some theoretical accounts of the world. Particle physics is in a similar state. The Standard Model that scientists have devised to describe the building blocks of nature is incomplete. One failing is the lack of a proven explanation for the existence of mass. Finding exactly what bestows this vital property on matter is the quarry of a global hunt.

Without mass the universe would be a sea of particles zipping around at the speed of light (the natural condition of any massless object). It would be hard for such particles to get together. Even molecules would be rare; galaxies, stars and planets would be impossible. So would life. So physicists want to find what enabled the universe to evolve in the way it has.

What they seek is a particle called the Higgs boson. Its existence was proposed in 1964 by Peter Higgs of the University of Edinburgh. He was trying to explain why some bosons (the particles that convey the fundamental forces which hold things together) have no mass whereas others have plenty of it. Photons, for example, transmit the electromagnetic force and are massless; W-bosons, which carry a short-range force in the atomic nucleus, are massive. So far, though, the Higgs has proved elusive.

To find it, scientists at the European particle-physics laboratory, CERN, in Geneva, are building what will, when it starts up later this year, be the world's most powerful particle smasher. This machine, known as the Large Hadron Collider, is designed especially to look for the Higgs boson. But the Europeans may be pipped at the post by rivals working at what is the highest-energy collider working today, the Tevatron, at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab) near Chicago.
Several interesting results have emerged from the Tevatron over the past few months. Last December physicists working on it announced that they had measured precisely the mass of the W-boson, which theory suggests is intricately linked to the mass of the Higgs. The W-boson turned out to be heavier than expected, which implies that the Higgs may be lighter than previously thought. A measurement of the mass of another particle, the top quark, also made by physicists working at the Tevatron, showed that this particle, too, is heavier than theory had predicted—again implying a light Higgs.

One way of modifying the Standard Model to accommodate these observations is to add an idea called supersymmetry. This decrees that each of the known types of particle the model describes has an as-yet-undetected partner type that serves to balance its properties in a mathematically pleasing way. Some versions of supersymmetry predict several Higgs bosons, each with a different mass—and one version, called the “minimal supersymmetric model”, also predicts a relatively light Higgs to be among them.

February market downturn

2007-03-08T01:35:00.001-08:00

Reuters writes, via Yahoo! Canada News:

Canada's economy created few jobs or none at all in February, according to analysts who blamed a cold spell but also said the labor market was due for a correction after two months of overblown employment growth.
The figures, due at 7 a.m. on Friday, will fall far short of January, when the economy blew past expectations and added 88,900 jobs. In December, 61,600 positions were created, six times the amount expected.

Job growth was so spectacular in the two months that some economists began to question the accuracy of the data.

The median forecast in a Reuters survey was for a gain of just 2,500 jobs in February, but individual estimates of the 16 analysts ranged from 15,000 job losses to 15,000 gains. Analysts see the unemployment rate unchanged at 6.2 percent.
After atypically warm weather in December and part of January, which kept construction and other activity going longer than usual, winter kicked in with full force in February, likely reducing the payrolls.

But even with hefty job losses in February, the gains over the three-month period would still be robust.

China not permitting new internet cafes

2007-03-06T20:58:00.001-08:00

The Associated Press writes, via CTV.ca:

China will not allow any new Internet cafes to open this year, state media reported on Tuesday.
Xinhua News Agency said 14 government departments, including the Ministry of Culture and the Ministry of Information Industry, had issued a notice saying that "in 2007, local governments must not sanction the opening of new Internet bars."

It said there are about 113,000 Internet cafes in China. Many are smoke-filled rooms with rows of computers set up for online gaming.

The Chinese government promotes Internet use for education and business but tries to block its public from seeing material online that is deemed subversive or pornographic.

In January, President Hu Jintao ordered Chinese Internet regulators to promote a "healthy online culture" to protect the government's stability.

China's online population grew by 23.4 per cent last year to 137 million people, about 10 per cent of its 1.3 billion population, the China Internet Network Information Center reported last month. The figure puts China on track to surpass the U.S. in the next two years as the nation with the most Internet users, the government had said.

Canadians avoiding cellphones

2007-03-06T20:45:00.000-08:00

From the CTV.ca News Staff:

A new study says Canada pays the highest cellphone fees of any developed country, with Canadians paying about 33 per cent more per month than Americans do. As a result, fewer Canadians are using portable devices than other developed countries.

According to the Seaboard Group, a Canadian technology research and consulting group, just 56 per cent of Canadians have a mobile phone, compared with 75 per cent of Americans, 86 per cent of Germans.

In a report entitled "Lament for a Wireless Nation," the Seaboard Group says the average user, defined as someone using 500 minutes a month, pays a 33-per-cent premium.

The high-end business user uses 1,200 minutes of voice plus data monthly and pays a staggering 150 per cent more than a subscriber in the United States.

The group contends that the high prices are stopping more Canadians from buying cellphones and PDAs.

Young Japanese say cellphones changing their lives

2007-03-05T01:24:00.001-08:00

From Yahoo! Canada News:

Almost all young Japanese say mobile phones have changed their lifestyles, with nearly one-third of them confessing to spending three hours or more a day on their mobile, a survey says.
Japan is the pioneer of third-generation telephones, which allow advanced functions such as Internet browsing and online shopping.

Of Japanese aged 20 to 40, some 16 percent say they spend three to five hours a day on their mobiles. Nine percent use their phones for five to 10 hours -- and four percent spend even more than 10 hours a day.

The recent survey by technical solutions provider Nepro IT Co. Ltd. found that mobile usage has gone up from even a year ago, when one in four young Japanese said they spent more than three hours on their phones.

Ninety percent of participants in the latest survey said that mobile phones have changed their lives in some way.

Lower life expectancy with vitamin supplements?

2007-03-05T00:41:00.000-08:00

FuturePundit writes:

A Cochrane Collaboration meta-analysis of 47 studies found a net harm from taking vitamins A, C, and E.

Taking only the 47 low-bias trials, involving 180,938 people, they found that supplements as a whole increased the death rate by 5 per cent. When the supplements were taken separately, beta carotene increased death rates by 7 per cent, vitamin A by 16 per cent, and vitamin E by 4 per cent. Vitamin C gave contradictory results, but when given singly or in combination with other vitamins in good-quality trials, increased the death rate by 6 per cent.
Selenium was the only supplement to emerge with any credit. It appears to cut death rates by 10 per cent when given on its own or with other supplements in high-quality trials, but the result is not statistically significant.
The researchers wrote: "Our findings contradict the findings of observational studies claiming that antioxidants improve health.

"Considering that 10% to 20% of the adult population in Europe and North America may consume the supplements, the public health consequences may be substantial."
They said there were several different explanations for this increase in risk - and suggested that knocking out 'free radicals' might actually interfere with a natural defence mechanism within the body.
One of the uses of free radicals in the body is in the immune system to kill invading pathogens. Taking big doses of antioxidant vitamins might render aged immune systems less able to take on invader pathogens. So the higher mortality rate of vitamin takers might be due to dampened immune systems.

Turmoil in markets has many causes

2007-02-28T19:01:00.000-08:00

Economist.com:

America boasts the world’s biggest and most liquid stockmarkets, and it has long been a cliché that when it sneezes the rest of the world catches a cold. But as other markets mature and capital moves more fluidly across the globe, the risk of infection spreading the other way grows. A graphic illustration came on Tuesday February 27th, when shares dipped around the world after China’s stockmarket suffered its biggest drop in a decade (before rebounding somewhat on Wednesday). America saw its steepest points fall since the markets reopened after the terrorist attacks of September 11th 2001—and the end of its longest run without a 2% daily drop since the 1950s.

All eyes were on America on Wednesday. Shortly before the markets opened, the Bureau of Economic Analysis revised its estimates of fourth quarter GDP growth sharply downward, to 2.2% compared with a previous estimate of 3.5%. American traders shrugged off this bad news, however, and markets recovered slightly. By noon, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was up by over 50 points, while the NASDAQ and the S&P 500 had posted single-digit gains over the previous close. Shanghai also rebounded, but other markets in Asia were weak. European indices also lost ground, with the FTSE 100 giving up almost all the year’s gains by the end of day.

Tuesday's rout began when mainland China’s biggest market, in Shanghai, ended the day down almost 9%, as investors there became spooked that the authorities would clamp down on the irrational exuberance that has taken hold there in recent months. This triggered falls in Europe, where markets ended down by 2-3% (the FTSE Eurofirst 300 index fell by 2.86%). The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped on its opening and continued to fall through the day, at one point plummeting more than 200 points in a couple of minutes.

Google legal trouble in Europe

2007-02-26T00:25:00.000-08:00

ZDNet News writes:

Google this week lost an initial attempt to gain sole control over the Gmail trademark in Switzerland, but the search giant said the ruling would not force it to rename its e-mail service there.
The Zurich Commercial Court on Monday dismissed Google's arguments in a lawsuit challenging a trademark registered by German venture capitalist Daniel Giersch, who runs an electronic postal delivery business in Germany and Switzerland that goes by the name G-mail (short for "Giersch mail").

The Mountain View, Calif.-based corporation had argued that Giersch had registered the name in bad faith, but the Swiss court disagreed. Google plans to file an appeal.
The outcome does not require Google to abandon use of Gmail for its Swiss service, Google representatives said. Both Giersch and Google received Swiss rights to the name in 2005, although Giersch applied for his trademark several months before Google did, and both remain in possession of those marks.

That's because Swiss trademark officials do not check to see whether a name has been registered before they award a trademark; they merely check to see whether it meets their standards on its own, said Rose Hagan, a senior trademark counsel for Google. Then they leave it up to the parties to file challenges if they wish, and Google chose to file such a challenge.

[To the tune of The Animals, "House of the Rising Sun", from the album "Best of The Animals".]

Knee ligament replacement made for rabbits

2007-02-25T20:57:00.000-08:00

From FuturePundit:

CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va., Feb. 19, 2007 - A research team led by Cato T. Laurencin, M.D., Ph.D., at the University of Virginia Health System has created a synthetic matrix on which the ACL (anterior cruciate ligament) can be regenerated effectively for treatment of ACL tears.

This is an important discovery, because the ACL, the stabilizing ligament that connects the thighbone to the legbone, usually does not heal after it is torn during sports or other injuries. The ACL unravels like an unbraided rope when torn, making healing difficult. More than 200,000 people in the United States suffer this rupture each year.

"This is the first tissue-engineered matrix for ACL to demonstrate such substantial neo-ligament formation, in terms of both vascularity and collagen formation," said Dr. Laurencin, Chairman of the UVa Department of Orthopaedic Surgery and leader of the team. "We tested one synthetic matrix with actual ACL cells from our animal model and one without these cells. While both systems encouraged the ingrowth of neo-ligament tissue, matrices with seeded cells performed particularly well in this study."

Dr. Laurencin concluded that the ACL replacement with ACL cells had a robust functional tissue outcome in the rabbits that received this matrix.

BitTorrent & Joost

2007-02-25T18:28:00.000-08:00

Reuters & Billboard write, via Scientific American:

There was a time when the phrase "peer-to-peer" (P2P) was practically a curse word in the music industry.
But in the past month, two new services have emerged to utilize the technology for the legal, protected distribution of content -- specifically video.

One of them is BitTorrent, which developed the technology that at one point was used for one-third of all P2P traffic on the Internet. The other is Joost -- formerly known as the Venice Project -- which was founded by the same developers who created the notorious Kazaa music-swapping community and later the Skype Internet telephone service.
Both BitTorrent and Joost rely on P2P technology to enhance the user experience. The more popular a file is on either network, the easier and faster it will be to download. Whereas the iTunes store shut down last Christmas because of overwhelming demand, services like BitTorrent and Joost are designed to improve as demand increases.

Despite their history with unauthorized digital content distribution, both services are setting themselves up to provide some of the better digital entertainment services available today. The question is: Will their technology credibility be sufficient to lure into a more legitimate environment the millions of downloaders who previously have used their technology to steal content?

Melting Glass?

2007-02-25T01:34:00.000-08:00

Scientific American writes:

In medieval European cathedrals, the glass sometimes looks odd. Some panes are thicker at the bottom than they are at the top. The seemingly solid glass appears to have melted. This is evidence, say tour guides, Internet rumors and even high school chemistry teachers, that glass is actually a liquid. And, because glass is hard, it must be a supercooled liquid.
Glass, however, is actually neither a liquid—supercooled or otherwise—nor a solid. It is an amorphous solid—a state somewhere between those two states of matter. And yet glass's liquidlike properties are not enough to explain the thicker-bottomed windows, because glass atoms move too slowly for changes to be visible.
Solids are highly organized structures. They include crystals, like sugar and salt, with their millions of atoms lined up in a row, explains Mark Ediger, a chemistry professor at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. "Liquids and glasses don't have that order," he notes. Glasses, though more organized than liquids, do not attain the rigid order of crystals. "Amorphous means it doesnt have that long-range order," Ediger says. With a "solid—if you grab it, it holds its shape," he adds.
Why old European glass is thicker at one end probably depends on how the glass was made. At that time, glassblowers created glass cylinders that were then flattened to make panes of glass. The resulting pieces may never have been uniformly flat and workers installing the windows preferred, for one reason or another, to put the thicker sides of the pane at the bottom. This gives them a melted look, but does not mean glass is a true liquid.

Women no more likely to quit jobs than men

2007-02-23T19:41:00.000-08:00

CBC News writes:

A Statistics Canada employment study suggests that women are no more likely to leave their jobs than their male counterparts, challenging the traditional view that women are more likely to quit because of family obligations.
The study, released Friday, says the notion that women are more likely to be absent or quit their jobs has been used to justify the pay inequity between the sexes.
But the federal agency says that while more women than men quit their jobs in the 1980s, levels evened off in the 1990s.

Statistics Canada analyst Xuelin Zhang says that today differences between the sexes are insignificant. The study also found that in terms of paid sick leave, women on average took one day more each year than men.

"Taken together, these results imply that, in Canada, the current gender differences in quits and absenteeism are not significant factors to explain certain gender differences in labour market outcomes, such as the wage gap between men and women," the study says.

A longer life through napping

2007-02-23T19:08:00.001-08:00

The Economist writes:

Taking siestas may reduce the risk of heart attacks

SLOTH may be seen as a sin, but some of history's most accomplished men were fond of lounging around. Leonardo da Vinci enjoyed napping. So did Albert Einstein and Winston Churchill. Richard Buckminster Fuller advocated taking 30-minute naps every six hours. He is reported to have abandoned the practice only because “his schedule conflicted with that of his business associates, who insisted on sleeping like other men.”

No one has yet proved a correlation between napping and artistic brilliance or professional success, but an intriguing study published this week in the Archives of Internal Medicine claims to find a link between daytime siestas and good health. A team of researchers led by Androniki Naska of the University of Athens Medical School and Dimitrios Trichopoulos of Harvard's School of Public Health followed over 23,000 Greek patients with no history of coronary disease, cancer or stroke, for an average of six years. Their conclusion: napping just might save your life.
The study found that the group of adults who took siestas (defined as 30-minute naps) at least three times a week had a third fewer deaths from heart disease than an equivalent group who did not sleep at all during the day. The benefit was greater for men than for women. (Whether women benefited at all was hard to estimate as there were too few deaths among them during the course of the study.) It was also greater for working men than for those who had retired.

A number of previous studies done in the Mediterranean and in parts of Central America (where siestas remain common) have come up with conflicting results, but Dr Naska and Dr Trichopoulos argue that those studies have often been flawed. The subjects in some, for example, had survived heart attacks and may therefore have benefited more from napping than healthy individuals do.

[To the tune of Oasis, "Supersonic", from the album "Definitely Maybe".]

Cold-fX U. S. Promo

2007-02-21T17:37:00.000-08:00

CANOE Technology writes:

CV Technologies Inc. (TSX:CVQ), the makers of the cold remedy Cold-fX, hopes to bolster marketing and clinical testing of the product in the United States.
CEO Jacqueline Shan says the goal is to become the top pharmacist-recommended cold and flu product in the U.S. But she says achieving that goal will cost millions of dollars in new investment.

Earlier this month CV Technologies reported a $1.56-million first-quarter loss, down from a year-ago profit of $4.4 million.

Last week, Health Canada approved the company's statement that Cold-fX helps reduce the frequency, severity and duration of cold and flu symptoms by boosting the immune system.

American regulators have not allowed the company to make similar claims in its product advertising in the U.S.

Improve cognitive health with cocoa

2007-02-20T18:53:00.000-08:00

PRNewswire writes:

A special cocoa made to retain naturally occurring compounds called flavanols may have the potential to help maintain healthy brain function and chart the course for future research that could lead to new solutions for preventing cognitive decline and dementia, according to a panel of scientists who presented new data at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).

Several studies suggest that consumption of a special cocoa made to be rich in flavanols, a naturally occurring nutrient abundant in fresh cocoa, may improve blood vessel function. Now, scientists believe the potential blood flow benefits associated with consumption of this flavanol-rich cocoa may extend to the brain -- which could have important implications for learning and memory.

"This research is impressive in that multiple laboratories are coming to the same conclusion about this flavanol-rich cocoa, and the findings give us completely new insights into how this flavanol-rich cocoa may impact health in a variety of ways not previously known," said symposium organizer Harold H. Schmitz, Ph.D., chief science officer at Mars, Incorporated, which helped sponsor today's symposium and has supported research on cocoa flavanols for more than 15 years. "The findings raise the possibility that products utilizing this cocoa could be developed to help maintain healthy brain function throughout several life stages. More research examining the potential of this cocoa in this important area of public health need is clearly warranted."

During the session entitled "The Neurobiology of Chocolate: A Mind-Altering Experience?," a panel of scientists presented evidence from several recent studies that demonstrated the enhanced brain blood flow after study participants consumed a specially formulated flavanol-rich cocoa beverage that was supplied by Mars, Incorporated. One study, conducted by Ian A. Macdonald, PhD, from the University of Nottingham Medical School in the United Kingdom, found that the consumption of this cocoa resulted in regional changes in blood flow in study participants, suggesting that cocoa flavanols may have therapeutic potential for the treatment of vascular impairments within the brain itself.

[To the tune of Neil Young, "Big Green Country", from the album "Mirrorball".]

Lack of sleep

2007-02-20T01:24:00.000-08:00

From FuturePundit:

Elizabeth Gould at Princeton University found that sleep deprivation in rats inhibits the replication of neural stem cells and therefore prevents creation of new neurons.
Prolonged sleep deprivation is stressful and has been associated with adverse consequences for health and cognitive performance. Here, we show that sleep deprivation inhibits adult neurogenesis at a time when circulating levels of corticosterone are elevated. Moreover, clamping levels of this hormone prevents the sleep deprivation-induced reduction of cell proliferation. The recovery of normal levels of adult neurogenesis after chronic sleep deprivation occurs over a 2-wk period and involves a temporary increase in new neuron formation. This compensatory increase is dissociated from glucocorticoid levels as well as from the restoration of normal sleep patterns. Collectively, these findings suggest that, although sleep deprivation inhibits adult neurogenesis by acting as a stressor, its compensatory aftereffects involve glucocorticoid-independent factors.

Quote of the day

2007-02-19T21:07:00.000-08:00

Believe, amid whatever madness or moral failure, that your life and temperament have some object on earth. Believe that you have something to give the world which cannot otherwise be given.

(“Philosophy of Browning,” Robert Browning by G. K. Chesterton)

Another take on the world's first practical quantum computer

2007-02-19T20:19:00.000-08:00

From The Economist:

As California is to the United States, so British Columbia is to Canada. Both are about as far south-west as you can go on their respective mainlands. Both have high-tech aspirations. And, although the Fraser Valley does not yet have quite the cachet of Silicon Valley, it may be about to steal a march on its southern neighbour. For, on February 13th, D-Wave Systems, a firm based in Burnaby, near Vancouver, announced the existence of the world's first practical quantum computer.

On paper at least, quantum computers promise to reduce dramatically the time needed to solve a range of mathematical tasks known as NP-complete problems. One famous example is the travelling salesman problem—finding the shortest route between several cities. This is a puzzle that increases exponentially in complexity with the number of cities considered. The reason is that every possible permutation needs to be looked at in order to find the best.
Quantum computers provide a neat shortcut to solving such problems. They do so by encoding all possible permutations in the form of a small number of “qubits”. In a normal computer, bits of digital information are either 0 or 1. In a quantum computer these normal bits are replaced by a “superposition” (the qubit) of both 0 and 1 that is unique to the ambiguous world of quantum mechanics. Qubits have already been created in the laboratory using photons (the particles of which light is composed), ions and certain sorts of atomic nuclei. By a process known as entanglement, two qubits can encode four different values simultaneously (00, 01, 10 and 11). Four qubits can represent 16 values, and so on. That means huge calculations can be done using a manageable number of qubits. In principle, by putting a set of entangled qubits into a suitably tuned magnetic field, the optimal solution to a given NP-complete problem can be found in one shot.

Future of telecom

2007-02-18T21:18:00.000-08:00

Daniel Thomas of The Wall Street Journal writes:

More than 1.1 billion mobile phones are expected to ship world-wide in 2007, making cellular devices more popular than the home computer and fixed-line telephone. According to Professor William Webb, author of the just-published "Wireless Communications: The Future" and head of research and development at United Kingdom telecommunications regulator Ofcom, the telecommunications industry is set to see yet more change in the next 20 years, as he discusses in these excerpts from an interview.

The telephone has changed massively since its invention 130 years ago. How do you think communications will change in the next 20 years?
Some analysts have predicted that mobile-phone screens, headphones and keyboards will become separate devices.
I think there will be more of a steady progression. It will always be the case that some people will want very small, thin phones, while other people will want large full-feature phones.

I expect we will see phones evolve in many different ways as people want to get different things out of them. In particular there will be larger screen versions for people that want to use their phones as a video-type device for mobile TV and podcasts.
It's unlikely that we will see roll-out keyboards in the next 10 or so years. But what we could see are screens that are brighter and have more power, with better resolution -- meaning that watching television on your mobile phone isn't quite so bad.

Wireless spectrum auction

2007-02-17T17:46:00.000-08:00

Reuters Canada writes, via Yahoo News Canada:

The Canadian government expects to auction off wireless spectrum licenses in early 2008 and said on Friday it has started a consultation process ahead of the bidding.
"This consultation solicits input that will assist my department in developing a framework to foster a fair, efficient and competitive marketplace and ensure that the Canadian wireless industry remains in step with international developments," Industry Minister Maxime Bernier said in a statement.

There will be a total of 105 megahertz of spectrum in the 2-gigahertz range available, the minority Conservative government said. No specific date was provided for when the auction would take place.

Spectrum is used by telecom companies to deliver services such as cellphone and wireless broadband Internet access.

The issues the government is considering include whether new entrants should be allowed to come into the market, as well as technical issues related to spectrum use, conditions of licenses and the size of spectrum blocks.

The country's three main wireless providers are Telus Corp., Bell Canada parent BCE Inc. and Rogers Communications Inc.

Dubious quantum claims

2007-02-17T11:06:00.000-08:00

Jordan Robertson of The Associated Press writes, via CANOE Technology:

Quantum computing is such an elusive goal that even the company claiming to have the “world’s first commercial quantum computer” acknowledged it isn’t entirely sure the machine is performing true quantum calculations.

And independent quantum computing researchers said they are dubious of some of the claims made by D-Wave Systems Inc. because the privately held Canadian company has not yet submitted its findings for peer review, a standard step for gaining acceptance in scientific circles.

Many scientists believe that true quantum computing — which is based on the unusual properties of quantum physics — promises to solve certain factoring, simulation and other intensive problems faster than today’s machines that rely on classical physics. Most say it’s likely still years or decades away.

“Until we see more actual measurements, it’s hard to know whether they succeeded or not,” said Phil Kuekes, a computer architect in the Quantum Science Research Group at Hewlett-Packard Co.’s HP Labs.

D-Wave held its first public demonstration Tuesday of a machine it claims uses quantum mechanics to solve a certain type of problems, such as searching a database for matching molecular structures.

But the company did not make the machine available for inspection and instead showed video from a remote location, saying it was too sensitive to be easily transported.

Edible radios

2007-02-17T10:03:00.000-08:00

New Scientist Tech writes:

Inventors keep coming up with new ways to exploit RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) tags. The latest brainwave, from Kodak, is to use them to probe a person's digestive system.

RFID tags are tiny radio chips that resonate with a single echo when hit with a radio trigger. Kodak’s digestible tags are harmless and intentionally fragile. The tags would be covered with soft gelatin that takes a while to dissolve in the stomach. After swallowing a tag a patient need only sit next to a radio source and receiver.

They stop working when exposed to gastric acid for a specific period of time, providing a subtle way to monitor a patient's digestive tract.

Kodak says that similar radio tags could also be embedded in an artificial knee or hip joint in such a way that they disintegrate as the joint does, warning of the need for more surgery. Attaching tags to ordinary pills could also help nurses confirm that a patient has really taken their medicine as ordered.

OLEDs bright future

2007-02-16T19:21:00.000-08:00

Candace Lombardi of CNET News discusses the OLED future:

Organic light-emitting diodes, which have only recently found their way from the lab to the Consumer Electronics Show floor, are poised to become a multibillion-dollar market.
The OLED market is predicted to hit $10.9 billion by 2012 and grow to $15.5 billion two years later, according to a report released Thursday from research firm NanoMarkets. The market is expected to reach $1.4 billion this year.

OLEDs can be fashioned into thin sheets of polymer that emit bright light when an electrical current is applied. They are already used on the outer screen of many clam-shell cell phones, a few MP3 players, an electric razor and a Kodak camera.
Kodak was one of the first to develop a specific kind of OLED technology. Now companies like Sony are touting OLEDs as the next big thing in flat-screen televisions and General Electric is using them to develop more energy-efficient lighting fixtures and windows. Their thinness and promise of low power consumption also make OLEDs ideal for signs, as well as computer and laptop monitors.

"The attraction for OLEDs in all of these areas--cell phones, signs or computer and television displays--is that, first of all, OLEDs are very bright and attractive to look at," said Lawrence Gasman, a senior analyst at NanoMarkets.

OLED displays require no backlighting, as LCDs (liquid crystal displays) do. In fact, OLEDs, which promise to be more energy-efficient, could be used to replace the power-eating fluorescent backlighting currently used for LCDs, according to Gasman.

[To the tune of Ben Harper & The Innocent Criminals, "Glory & Consequence", from the album "Live From Mars - Disc One".]

Children's well-being

2007-02-16T13:19:00.000-08:00

From The Economist:

JUDGING by the loud howls of concern this week, the lot of children in Britain and America is a rather terrible one. On Wednesday February 14th Unicef published a report comparing the well-being of young people in 21 rich countries, and concluded that British and American youths endure the worst quality of life of any. In contrast, North European children, especially the Nordics, apparently have a lovely time. Cue hand-wringing from a lot of worried Anglo-American parents.

In fact, as the authors of the UN report admit, such broad conclusions need to be kept in some perspective. Many of the data presented are hardly new or surprising: who did not already know that rates of teenage pregnancy are high in Britain, or that junk-food-guzzling kids are getting dangerously fat in America? Accurate comparisons of social and educational trends, between countries, are also notoriously tricky to make. Perhaps most important, the report could cast more light (though it does give some) on how child welfare is changing over time. Rates of infant mortality, child deaths caused by accidents or other scores of health and safety, for example, show that children in all these rich countries in fact enjoy an historically unparalleled quality of life.

Open Gmail

2007-02-14T23:54:00.000-08:00

The Associated Press writes, via CBC News:

Google Inc.'s free e-mail service will shed the final remnants of its invitation-only restrictions on Wednesday, extending the reach of an increasingly popular product that has emerged as a vital cog in the online search leader's expansion efforts.

Invitations will no longer be required to join the nearly three-year-old Gmail service in the United States, Canada, Mexico, and a swath of Asian and South American countries where the Mountain View-based company previously limited the number of users.

With those restrictions now lifted, Gmail will be open to all comers worldwide for the first time since Google introduced the service on April Fool's Day in 2004.

"It's a pretty momentous time for Gmail," said Keith Coleman, Google's product manager for the service.

[To the tune of Neil Young, "Prairie Wind", from the album "Prairie Wind".]

More cameraphones than internet users

2007-02-14T09:31:00.000-08:00

Tomi T. Ahonen writes:

Expect this headline this Spring: More people with cameraphones, than the total internet user base.

The world has about 1.1 billion internet users, and about 2.7 billion mobile phone subscriptions. But a big milestone will happen this spring, when more cameraphones will be in use, than all who access the internet. Already today, with 1.2 billion cameraphones shipped since 2001, more cameraphones have shipped in total than worldwide internet users. But obviously with an 18 month replacement cycle for phones, most of the first 2001, 2002, even 2003 cameraphones have found themselves in the big phone graveyard of the sky; they have been replaced. But my analysis says we have 1.04 billion active cameraphones in use today. That will grow to 1.44 billion by year-end 2007.

Assuming the internet user numbers also grow at about the same rate as last year, by late Spring 2007 we will have more people with cameraphones, than access to the internet.

Then we should think a bit what does that mean? Its another variant on the PC vs mobile phone equation. Many think that the PC is "inherently superior" and the mobile phone thus would be somehow "inherently inferior". But for what? Consider your 16 year old teenager today. Want to really give that kid a boost to creative impulses? Get the 16 year old a laptop, and what will the teenager do with it? Few will take to the keyboard and write masterpieces and turn into the next Hemingway or Shakespeare. I'd say most of the heavy use of that laptop would be for gaming and chat and messaging and partying at various virtual worlds with their friends. Yes, a PC can be a great creative tool - and yes, I've written all of my books on PCs, but you know your own kids. Just giving them a PC won't turn them into authors.

No revenue for RFID chips

2007-02-14T01:04:00.000-08:00

Michael Kanellos from CNET News.com discusses RFID chips lackluster sales:

VeriChip, which has created a system for putting RFID chips into humans for medical-record tracking, held an initial public offering on Friday, and the company's stock has been struggling ever since. The stock is currently trading at around $6.15. The company released 3.1 million shares in the IPO for $6.50 a share.
Part of the problem is likely the lackluster sales for the company's most famous product.
Only 222 medical patients in total have opted to get RFID chips from VeriChip implanted as of the end of 2006, according to documents filed by the company with the Securities and Exchange Commission as part of its initial public offering. It's a modest number, the company says, and revenue for these systems is far below projections.
"To date, we have only generated approximately $0.1 million in revenue ($100,000) from sales of the microchip inserter kits, significantly less than we had projected at the beginning of 2006. We may never achieve market acceptance or more than nominal or modest sales of this system," the company stated.
The slow sales will likely hearten the many critics of the company. When the company first began touting the technology nearly three years ago, it was criticized by civil libertarians, who saw the chips as a gateway to privacy erosion, and by religious consumers some of whom said that implantable chips were the mark of the beast.

Fake bloggers prosecuted

2007-02-13T10:49:00.000-08:00

Via The Times:

Hotels, restaurants and online shops that post glowing reviews about themselves under false identities could face criminal prosecution under new rules that come into force next year.
Businesses which write fake blog entries or create whole websites purporting to be from customers will fall foul of a European directive banning them from “falsely representing oneself as a consumer”.
From December 31, when the change becomes law in the UK, they can be named and shamed by trading standards or taken to court.
The Times has learnt that the new regulations also will apply to authors who praise their own books under a fake identity on websites such as Amazon.
Online consumer reviews are playing an ever greater role in shaping shopping habits, with websites such as TripAdvisor for the travel industry being seen as increasingly influential.
However, a string of businessman in the UK and the US have been caught posing as supposedly independent customers in an attempt to boost sales.

Yahoo Messenger inside email

2007-02-13T00:45:00.000-08:00

From Reuters Canada:

Yahoo Inc., the world's largest consumer e-mail provider, on Monday said it has embedded instant messaging features inside its e-mail program, bridging a generational divide that has confused many users.
Heavy Internet users, especially younger, Web-savvy users of social networking sites or office workers, have long toggled between e-mail and instant messaging services.
But for more occasional users of consumer e-mail services, the allure of instant messaging has remained far from obvious.
Consumers can now run the two programs in one Web browser. There is no need to download Yahoo Messenger software, a complication for users who are not technically inclined.
Each instant messaging dialogue will take place in a new conversation window within Yahoo Mail, allowing people to chat with multiple friends simultaneously, without leaving e-mail.

[To the tune of The Arcade Fire, "Rebellion (Lies), from the album "Funeral".]

Six new Nokia models

2007-02-13T00:41:00.000-08:00

Tarmo Virki from Reuters Canada discusses Nokia's new offerings:

The world's biggest mobile handset maker, Nokia, announced six new phone models on Monday, including a new mid-priced phone and models targeting business users.
A thin range of mid-priced phones and its corporate line-up have been among the weaknesses for the global market leader, which dominates global sales of phones at the cheaper end.
"We are strong in the low end and we are at least as strong in the high end. Our mid-range is not where we would like it to be," Kai Oistamo, head of Nokia's mobile phones unit, told Reuters in an interview at the 3GSM mobile telecoms trade show.
Nokia also took aim at the potentially lucrative real-time navigation market, which it considers crucial to its core business, launching a new smartphone with fast data connections, maps and full navigation software.

New genetic explanation for type 2 diabetes

2007-02-12T12:28:00.000-08:00

From the journal Nature, via medilexicon.com:

An international team of scientists has found four points on the human gene map that together account for 70 per cent of the genetic predisposition to type 2 diabetes.

The study is published this week online in the journal Nature.

The research team comes from Imperial College London, McGill University, Canada, the Pasteur Institute of France and other institutions.

Type 2 diabetes mellitus is caused by a combination of environmental and genetic factors, of which very little is known.

However, a new technology called "high density micro-arrays" allows researchers to profile genetic maps in a detailed and precise way. They can investigate the different ways that individual points on the human gene map are expressed in different people.

Vodafone wins bid for Indian mobile firm

2007-02-12T00:39:00.000-08:00

CNN Money writes:

Britain's Vodafone Group Plc has won the battle for a controlling stake in Hutchison Essar with a bid that values India's fourth-biggest mobile firm at around $19 billion, including debt.
India's Essar Group, which owns 33 percent of Hutch Essar and had also been bidding for the 67 percent being sold by Hutchison Telecommunications International Ltd, confirmed the deal on Sunday.
A source close to the matter earlier told Reuters that Vodafone (Charts) had won the bid battle for the 67 percent stake, defeating India's Reliance Communications and Hinduja group, as well as Essar.
Vodafone declined to comment and Hutchison was not immediately available for comment.
The deal is a critical move by Vodafone chief executive Arun Sarin, who is under pressure amid slowing growth in Vodafone's core European markets to expand the business while at the same time not overpay for acquisitions.

[To the tune of The Beatles, "She Said She Said", from the album "Revolver (MFCD Mono Remaster)".]

People over 35 bird flu immune?

2007-02-12T00:26:00.000-08:00

CTV News writes:

Nearly 90 per cent of the people who've been diagnosed so far with H5N1 avian flu were under age 40, a new analysis from the World Health Organization shows.

And two British scientists suggest that as yet unexplained phenomenon could be a clue that widespread immunity to infection with this virus may exist in people aged 35 and older.

In a letter to the March issue of the journal Emerging Infectious Diseases, Matthew Smallman-Raynor of the University of Nottingham and Andrew Cliff of the University of Cambridge note that the age distribution of H5N1 human cases is "consistent with a biological model of geographically widespread immunity to avian influenza A (H5N1) in persons born before 1969."

"Such a model would account for the similar rates of disease activity in younger age categories, the sudden and pronounced reduction of cases in patients over 30-35 years of age, and the age skew that transcends the sociocultural and demographic contexts of countries and continents,'' wrote Smallman-Raylor and Cliff, who teach analytical and theoretical geography respectively.

It is not known why H5N1 seems to prefer the young and rarely infects the elderly, the age group hardest hit by seasonal flu.

Edison's light bulb being replaced

2007-02-10T17:34:00.000-08:00

David Porter of The Associated Press discusses the switch to fluorescent lighting:

EDISON, N.J. (AP) - One of the inventions that put this central New Jersey town on the map could go the way of the typewriter and the horse and buggy if some U.S . legislators have their way.
The incandescent light bulb, perfected for mass use by Thomas A. Edison in the late 19th century, is being supplanted by fluorescent lighting that is more efficient and longer lasting. Last month, California Assemblyman Lloyd Levine announced he would propose a bill to ban the use of incandescent bulbs in his state.
And Thursday, New Jersey Assemblyman Larry Chatzidakis introduced a bill that calls for the state to switch to fluorescent lighting in government buildings over the next three years.

[To the tune of Tool, "Parabol", from the album "Lateralus"]

Gravity Conundrum

2007-02-09T19:09:00.000-08:00

The Economist discusses where Einstein went wrong:

Familiar as it may seem, gravity remains a mystery to modern physics. Despite several decades of trying, scientists have failed to fit Einstein's general theory of relativity, which describes how gravity holds big objects together, with the quantum mechanics he pioneered, which describes the tiny fundamental particles of which matter consists and the forces by which they interact. Recent discoveries have highlighted further problems.
Many physicists are therefore entertaining the idea that Einstein's ideas about gravity must be wrong or at least incomplete. Showing exactly how and where the great man erred is the task of the scientists who gathered at the “Rethinking Gravity” conference at the University of Arizona in Tucson this week.
One way to test general relativity is to examine ever more closely the assumptions on which it rests, such as the equivalence principle: that gravity accelerates all objects at the same rate, regardless of their mass or composition. This principle was famously demonstrated by Galileo Galilei some 400 years ago when he simultaneously dropped cannon and musket balls, and balls made of gold, silver and wood, from the Tower of Pisa. Each appeared to hit the ground at the same time.
A more precise test requires a taller tower. In effect, researchers are sending balls all the way to the moon and back. Tom Murphy, of the University of California, San Diego, and his colleagues fire laser beams from the deserts of New Mexico at reflectors placed on the moon by American and Russian spacecraft in the late 1960s and early 1970s. They use a telescope to capture the small fraction of the light that returns. Because the speed of light is known, they can calculate the distance between the Earth and the moon from the time taken for light to traverse it.

[To the tune of The Killers, "Somebody Told Me".]

British Columbia's quantum computer

2007-02-09T14:30:00.000-08:00

CBC News writes:

A Vancouver-area company is set to publicly demonstrate its new quantum computer next week in what may be the first time the paradigm-shifting technology leaves the research laboratory.
D-Wave Systems Inc. of Burnaby, B.C. plans to show off its commercial quantum computers at the Computer History Museum on Feb. 13 and at the Telus World of Science museum in Vancouver on Feb. 15.

Quantum technology could revolutionize the computer industry by allowing systems to simultaneously perform multiple calculations where traditional computers would have to perform them one at a time.

Such a system would be governed by the rules of quantum physics, as opposed to classical physics laws such as mechanics, gravity and Einstein's theory of relativity. Quantum mechanics rule particle interactions below the atomic scale, where the conventional laws of physics break down.

The Distance Paradox

2007-02-08T21:37:00.000-08:00

Slate has a commentary by Tim Harford on why we travel for work more than ever:

It stands to reason that distance is dead. Electronic communication is better and cheaper than it's ever been. Sitting on the sofa just now, I used a cheap laptop computer and my neighbor's wireless network and ordered a free quad-band mobile phone that—I am told—will let me make calls and send e-mails from almost anywhere in the world.
More to the point, nobody would be remotely impressed with my phone's features. Virtual worlds, BlackBerrys, video-conferencing from the local Starbucks—it has all become so easy—and so commonplace—so quickly.
Intuitively, that should mean that geography has become less important. E-mail and video-conferencing mean fewer flights. No more business conferences or meetings at Davos. Telecommuters don't need to clog up the roads, and property prices in London and New York should slide as people carry out their investment-banking responsibilities from Yorkshire or Iowa.
It doesn't take a genius to figure out that there's something wrong with this argument. Despite the ease of communication and the drop in the cost of transporting goods, geography seems to be as important as ever for most of us. People haven't stopped flying to meetings and conferences. The World Economic Forum meetings are now a round-the-calendar circus in more than 10 countries. New York is one of the few places in the United States where the real-estate market isn't stuttering.

Nokia free mapping and search software

2007-02-08T21:02:00.000-08:00

Bryan Gardiner writing for PC Magazine:

Nokia said on Thursday it will start offering its smart2go mapping and navigation platform free to mobile customers using select Nokia S60 and Windows Mobile 5.0 devices.
Smart2go allows users to map routes in more than 150 countries and is supported for full turn-by-turn satellite navigation in over 30 countries, according to the Finnish mobile phone maker.
The application will also let people view their current locations, search for points-of-interests (POI), and create routes to get them there free of charge. Mobile users can store the map data on a memory card in the handset and, if needed, download it over the air or via a connection to a PC.
According to Nokia, the smart2go application will be available for free starting on February 10 and the company says it will roll out support for most other major mobile OS platforms, including Nokia S60, Series 40, PocketPC, Linux, and other Windows Mobile devices later in the year.

[To the tune of Ben Harper, "The Drugs Don't Work", from the album "Indie, Volume 8 (disc 1)".]

Japanese companies to develop mobile phone platform

2007-02-08T19:27:00.000-08:00

From CANOE Technology:

Six Japanese companies plan to jointly develop a basic platform for manufacturing next-generation mobile phone handsets as a way to cut development time and costs, the companies said Thursday.
Japan’s biggest wireless carrier, NTT DoCoMo Inc., and five manufacturing companies hope to complete the platform — a system that contains all the basic hardware and software common to mobile phones — during the July-September quarter of 2008, the companies said in a joint statement.

Semiconductor maker Renesas Technology Corp., mobile phone manufacturer Sony Ericcsson Mobile Communications, and electronics manufacturers Fujitsu Ltd., Mitsubishi Electric Corp. and Sharp Corp. round out the consortium. The companies said joint development of the basic platform for so-called third-generation, or 3G, mobile phones should help to cut their development time and costs, freeing them to invest more time and resources on developing distinctive handset features and expand their product lineups.
Mobile phone users are a ubiquitous sight in Japan, where people use the phones for everything from listening to music and downloading videos to sending e-mail and surfing the Internet. Some more recent phone models are also equipped to function as electronic wallets.

[To the tune of The White Stripes, "Hypnotise", from the album "Elephant".]

EMI Removing Restrictions

2007-02-08T19:13:00.000-08:00

The Wall Street Journal writes:

In a move that could signal a shift in the music industry's antipiracy strategy, EMI Group PLC has been holding talks with several online retailers about the possibility of selling its entire digital music catalog in the unprotected MP3 format, which can be freely copied and played on virtually any device, according to numerous people familiar with the matter.

If EMI strikes such deals, it would become the first major music company to embrace a burgeoning effort to expand the digital marketplace by removing restrictions on the ways consumers can listen to music they purchase online.

More Accessible Gmail

2007-02-07T23:39:00.000-08:00

The Associated Press writes, via Wired News:

Google Inc.'s e-mail service is almost ready to accept all comers, nearly three years after the online search leader shook up the Internet by offering users an unprecedented amount of free storage and displaying ads based on the content of the correspondence.
Effective Wednesday, the Mountain View-based company removed the invitation-only restrictions on its Gmail service in Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Brazil. Google opened up the service last year in several other parts of the world, including Japan, Australia, New Zealand, Russia and Egypt.

Invitations to open a Gmail account are still required in North America, Asia and most parts of the South America, but Google spokeswoman Courtney Hohne said those restrictions will be lifted "very soon." Even then, Gmail will retain a "beta" tag to signify the company still considers the service to be in a testing phase.

Getting a Gmail invitation hasn't been too difficult for some time. Current account holders have had as many as 100 invitations to send out to friends and family. Anyone willing to provide Google with their cell phone number can also request an invitation.

[To the tune of The Red Hot Chili Peppers, "Aeroplane"].

Vitamin D may reduce cancer risk

2007-02-06T23:40:00.000-08:00

From Earthtimes:

A U.S. meta-analysis found that raising the serum level of vitamin D may cut in half the cases of breast cancer and two-thirds of colorectal-cancer cases.

The breast-cancer study, published online in the Journal of Steroid Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, found that individuals with the highest blood levels of vitamin D had the lowest risk of breast cancer.

The data were very clear, showing that individuals in the group with the lowest blood levels had the highest rates of breast cancer, and the breast cancer rates dropped as the blood levels of 25-hydroxyvitamin D increased, said study co-author Cedric Garland of the Moores Cancer Center at University of California-San Diego. The serum level associated with a 50 percent reduction in risk could be maintained by taking 2,000 international units of vitamin D3 daily plus, when the weather permits, spending 10 to 15 minutes a day in the sun.The colorectal-cancer study, published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, is a meta-analysis of five studies that found raising the serum level of vitamin D would reduce the incidence rates of colorectal cancer by half, according to study co-author Edward D. Gorham of the Moores Cancer Center.

When is a Canadian not a Canadian?

2007-02-06T23:16:00.000-08:00

The Economist writes:

IN THE deathless prose of bureaucracy, it is known as the Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative. Adopted after the terrorist attacks of 2001, it requires all returning Americans, as well as citizens of Canada, Mexico and some Caribbean countries, to present a passport when entering the United States by air. Since many such travellers previously got by with a driving licence, it was dreaded by tourism officials in the countries concerned. But when it came into effect earlier this month, all seemed to go smoothly.
Except it didn't for several thousand Canadians who, when they applied for passports, discovered that their own country's bureaucracy had incomprehensibly stripped them of their nationality. Some of them have even become stateless.
Up to 20,000 people may have fallen foul of a little-known provision of the Citizenship Act of 1947. In some cases, their misfortune lies in having been born during the period when Canada did not recognise dual citizenship until the act was amended in 1977. Some are the children of war brides who came to Canada after the second world war. Others are “border babies” born in an American hospital because it was closer to their home than the nearest Canadian town. A third group are children of parents who moved to the United States for work and took out American citizenship. The law states that if any of these Canadians were living outside Canada on their 28th birthday (or 24th in the 1947 act) they would automatically lose their citizenship unless they filled out a form saying they wished to keep it.

India wants Google Earth maps blurred

2007-02-05T20:58:00.000-08:00

From CBC News:

Google is in talks with the Indian government over high-resolution images of the country shown on its Google Earth service.
Indian defence officials raised security concerns last year with the internet search engine about the satellite imaging program's level of detail at sensitive locations.

A Times of India report on Sunday said Google has agreed to blur or distort the installations instead of blacking them out so as not to draw attention to their locations. However, a report in Monday's issue of Computerworld quotes a spokeswoman for Google India as saying no agreement has yet been reached.

Smart "Dumb Terminals"

2007-02-05T18:05:00.000-08:00

The Wall Street Journal writes:

Since the early 1980s, corporate computing power has shifted away from the big central computers that were hooked to "dumb terminals" on employees' desks and toward increasingly powerful desktop and laptop computers. Now, there are signs the tide is turning back.

A new generation of simplified devices -- most often called "thin clients" or "simple terminals" -- is gaining popularity with an increasing number of companies and other computer users in the U.S., Europe and Asia. The stripped-down machines from Wyse Technology Inc., Neoware Inc., Hewlett-Packard Co. and others let users perform such tasks as word processing or accessing the Internet at their desks just as they did with their personal computers.

New Canada Food Guide

2007-02-05T13:17:00.000-08:00

From CTV.ca:

A long-awaited update to Canada's Food Guide has been unveiled that finally accounts for age and gender differences in its recommendations.

The new guide is the first update to the bible on nutritional standards in more than 14 years.

As expected, it encourages eating plenty of fruits, vegetables, and whole grains, and recommends limiting foods high in calories, fat, sugar and salt.

But it also emphasizes the importance of combining regular physical activity with healthy eating.

The Self-Chilling Can

2007-02-05T00:19:00.000-08:00

gizmag.com writes:

Thomas Midgley famously demonstrated the non-toxicity and non-flammability of Freon in the 1930's when he inhaled the gas and then blew out a candle with it. Freon went on to be the standard element in refrigeration. Could this historic moment in the development of refrigerators be over shadowed by the advent of the self chilling can?

It is the stuff of science fiction but soon enough you'll be reaching in to the pantry for that ice cold drink. It's a paradox that's still a few summers away from supermarket shelves but the I.C Can is very real. Created by Tempra Technology and Crown Cork & Seal the I.C Can works through simple evaporation not compressed gas.

Mobiles Can Make A Difference

2007-02-04T22:22:00.000-08:00

Kevin Maney says:

It feels perverse to meet amid the spectacle of 108-inch TV screens, automatic scalp massagers and cars with 20,000-watt stereos and talk about the digital divide. It's like ordering a seven-course spread at Spago and then discussing world hunger.
But for at least two of the CEOs at this month's Consumer Electronics Show — Ed Zander of Motorola and Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo of Nokia — the billions of unconnected, undigitized, underserved people around the globe are often top of mind.

On the crass side, those billions are virgin potential customers, viewed by cellphone companies much the same as Starbucks sees the unfortunate souls who have never downed a half-caf mocha latte. As Zander noted during his CES speech, the number of new cellphone customers in India each month equals the population of Denmark.

But there's another, more magnanimous side. Cellphones aren't at all like mocha lattes. They are miniature self-improvement machines. They can make as much difference in individual lives as literacy, without the steep learning curve.

Mozilla in China

2007-02-03T17:33:00.000-08:00

From ZDNet News:

Mozilla.org, which makes the open-source Firefox browser, is opening a China office to do battle in the world's second-largest Web market.
California-based Mozilla already has a presence in China via a not-for-profit foundation supporting open-source software projects, but the Beijing office will be its first real corporate presence, Mozilla Chief Operating Officer John Lilly said Friday.
Open-source software is intended to be copied and modified freely by people, leaving developers to make money from selling features and technical support, unlike paid-for proprietary software such as Microsoft's Windows operating system.

The aim of Mozilla is to educate China's open-source developers, who will adapt the technology to suit local tastes and become "Mozilla with Chinese characteristics," Lilly said.

The company has around 80 million to 100 million users globally and around 1 million in China, Lilly said. China is the world's second-largest Internet market after the United States, with around 137 million users.

No Emission Cuts

2007-02-03T13:42:00.000-08:00

Peter Gorrie of The Toronto Star:

Faced with the most overwhelming proof yet that the world faces a severe threat from greenhouse gas emissions, the Conservative government says it won't change course on climate change.
While acknowledging the problem is "enormous," Prime Minister Stephen Harper said yesterday that for the time being, Canada can only hope to stabilize its emissions rather than aim for cuts.
Harper spoke to reporters in Ottawa following the release of a major report – the consensus of 2,500 top scientists from Canada and 129 other countries – that concludes evidence of climate change is "unequivocal" and human activity is "very likely" to blame.

The Wallet 2.0

2007-02-03T01:48:00.000-08:00

gizmag.com writes:

We’ve seen several new ideas for carrying one’s valuables in the form of the Jimi wallet and the Tsaya Thigh Holster for gals who don’t like to carry handbags but both are designed for minimalists, not for those of us with busy lives and lots of paper and stuff to schlep around. So the arrival of the details of the Wallet 2.0 really got the brain cells working. The US$30 Wallet 2.0 has a soft silicone outer case, so it moulds to the shape of your hip or breast pocket more readily than a leather wallet. It's also water repellant, but the real trickery is inside where it uses specially designed folders like those in an organizer or planner. There are five different refill sheets designed to hold paper money, coins, ID and credit cards and there are more interesting and useful sheets on the way.

Second Life Economy

2007-02-02T18:24:00.000-08:00

Bryan Gardiner of PC Magazine writes:

It may be a virtual world, but that doesn't mean real business can't flourish within its simulated borders. At least that's the conclusion IBM and other tech and retail giants have come to regarding Linden Labs' Second Life.

But as more and more companies move to make inroads into such metaverses —and as the hype surrounding the untapped market potential and all the new forms of social interaction, collaboration, and expression they offer builds—many seem to be forgetting a relatively simple fact: a thriving business community in a virtual world is still a long way from happening.

Orange iPod Shuffle Please

2007-02-02T11:50:00.000-08:00

Gizmodo writes: "The iPod shuffle is now available in pink, green, blue and orange but it still costs the same: $79. The tiny 1GB player is still available in its original silver color, too."

I'll take one in orange please.

iPhone Anyone?

2007-02-02T00:12:00.000-08:00

May Wong and Jari Tanner of The Associated Press write:

Pablo Gonzalez, a Prada shoe-wearing cell phone connoisseur who jumps from one new handset to the next, is ready to ditch his $1,000 touch-screen cell phone for Apple's iPhone when it becomes available in June.

Tark Abed, on the other hand, just got the new Samsung BlackJack smart phone a month ago. The industrial designer at Palo Alto-based Speck Design isn't keen on spending $500 even though he finds the iPhone's sleek interface alluring and innovative.

"I upgraded to an unlimited data plan and got the BlackJack for $149," he said, "and that's a lot of phone already for $149."

Their divergent views underscore why Apple Inc.'s much-hyped seminal cell phone is all the rage and why, at the same time, incumbent rivals are stirred but say they are not shaken.

The iPhone got everybody — from techie bloggers to late-night TV hosts — talking when it arrived fashionably late on the wireless communications scene. Would-be rivals are welcoming the challenge but questioning Apple's claim that the iPhone is "revolutionary."

Apple's competitors predict that even as the gadget will likely boost the company's fortunes, it will have limited market share and fall short of the successes Apple has seen with its iPod portable music player. They contend some of the phone's much-touted features — such as its touch screen, movement sensors and music player — are not innovative or new.

"They're just jumping into the party where everyone else is," said Peter Skarzynski, a senior vice president at Samsung Electronics Co.'s telecommunications unit in North America.

Apple is getting in at a time when competition in the cell phone business is, as ThinkEquity Partners analyst Jonathan Hoopes puts it, "as hot as Hades."

Because nearly everyone already has a wireless device of some sort, the success of the iPhone will depend on whether Apple's notoriously slick marketing machine can persuade consumers to replace their current phones with an iPhone that costs $500 or more. In some cases they'll have to switch carriers as Apple's gadgets will work only through Cingular Wireless.

"This is not just as easy as going out to buy an iPod," Hoopes said.

The cell phone market is crowded, yet still growing, and its biggest players are looking for ways to squeeze more profits from declining prices and ever-fickle consumer tastes.
One of the brightest growth spots for the industry has been in cell phones that function as do-it-all devices capable of not only voice communications, but also data, such as Web-browsing and e-mail.

It is precisely this category called smart phones that Apple is targeting with the iPhone, which triples as a phone, a music player and a mobile Internet device.

Sales of smart phones in North America are estimated to grow from 11 million units in 2007 to 55 million in 2010, according to market research firm Gartner Inc. Worldwide unit sales are projected to nearly quadruple, from 122 million in 2007 to 450 million in 2010.

Nokia Corp. Chief Executive Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo told analysts last week that he doesn't think Nokia, the world's No. 1 handset maker, needs to change its business approach because of the iPhone.

But Apple's entry "will stimulate this market, it's very clear," he said. "The fact that we will see multipurpose devices from many manufacturers, I think it will be good for the industry. And in that way, I very much welcome (Apple to the market)."

Handset makers, which already face cutthroat design and pricing battles among themselves, will be watching as well. Samsung, the third-largest cell phone maker, is paying particular attention to effects on its line of mid- to high-end phones.

"It'll definitely impact us, but how much, it'll depend," said Dong Jin Oh, president and CEO of the American unit of Samsung.

Samsung and its rivals were just as curious as everyone else Jan. 9 when Apple, after more than two years of rumors and development, finally delivered on the hype.

Nokia employees watched online demonstrations of the iPhone from their trade show booth at the International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.

Padmasree Warrior, chief technology officer for No. 2 handset maker Motorola Inc., posted a "morning after" blog saying she'd always been a fan of Apple's creativity. She called the iPhone a "compelling concept," but she also outlined its potential shortcomings.

"There is nothing revolutionary or disruptive about any of the technologies," she wrote.

With the iPhone still months away from the market, no one knows all its features or how well it functions in real life.

Any criticisms leveled now — the high price, the exclusive distribution through Cingular Wireless, the choice to use the slower 2.5G data network, the apparent lack of support for Microsoft Corp.'s business e-mail programs, the lack of a traditional QWERTY button keyboard — could become moot or insignificant later.

If the incumbents are nervous, they're not saying it.

"The iPhone appears to be aimed at consumers; Palm targets prosumers and business customers who require a rich e-mail experience," said Marlene Somsak, a spokeswoman for Palm Inc., maker of Treo smart phones. And those customers also need a full keyboard, she said; typing on the iPhone is done by finger taps on the 3.5-inch touch-screen instead of regular buttons.

The Treo was among the smart phone models Apple Chief Executive Steve Jobs portrayed as clunky to use and "not so smart" during his inaugural demonstration of the iPhone.

Samsung knows consumer tastes for cell phones are diverse. In any given year, Samsung has 30 or more models distributed through multiple carriers in the United States and more than 100 worldwide.

"One size doesn't fit all," Skarzynski said. "One look doesn't fit all."

But analysts say cell phone makers should still be concerned about Apple making inroads into their territory.

"There is now clearly an extremely savvy marketing competitor with a huge user base," Hoopes said. "They better be nervous. But they are all trying to feign complacency."

More Useful Mobiles

2007-02-01T16:58:00.000-08:00

The Associated Press says:

Surfing the internet on most cellphones is a balky, awkward experience, reminiscent of the web on dial-up in 1995, but a handful of startups are trying to make it much cooler.

By using new programming tools or rethinking existing ones, companies at this week's DEMO emerging technologies conference in Palm Desert, Calif., say they can replicate aspects of today's desktop computing on a phone's small screen.

One such company, Bling Software Inc., uses a programming technique called Ajax to deliver web-like modules of content to any phone with a browser, on any wireless carrier's network. Ajax speeds up web applications by summoning snippets of data as needed instead of pulling entire web pages over and over.

These modules might contain video clips and other interactive features. Users can access them through a graphic interface rather than with the text-heavy menus often used to bring content onto cellphones.

Jay-Z, Barry Bonds among Bling offerings

Hoping to be first attract a young, urban demographic, Bling content modules include rapper Jay-Z and baseball's Barry Bonds. The San Francisco Giants slugger is a business partner of one of Bling's investors and appeared at DEMO to help launch Bling's platform.

Bling will make it possible for Bonds fans to download a Bonds module to cellphones, which will show highlight clips and a running tally of his career homer total as he pursues Hank Aaron's all-time record — assuming, of course, that he stays healthy and out of legal trouble as federal investigators probe the use of steroids in sports.

"I just want to interact with my fans," Bonds proclaimed. "Now there's a closer interacting phase."

Other DEMO presenters share Bling's contention that it takes slight tweaks to make everyday cellphones much easier to use.

E-mails sent to phones

TeleFlip Inc. is launching a free service that can route e-mails to cellphones. The messages reach the phone through the devices' text-messaging systems, but are formatted to look as clean as traditional e-mails. CEO Tony Davis says this simple trick is all that's needed to turn any regular phone into a "smart phone" — though in fairness, those more expensive devices offer more than just e-mail.

Another vendor, GoWare Inc., plans to soon offer a way for any cellphone web browser to have a customizable portal of personalized content.

Users should soon be able to go to GoWare's DoMo website and select the web feeds and other information they would like to have on their phones. Then, rather than being confined to whatever links wireless carriers happen to push to the phone, DoMo users could have slices of their favourite Web sites delivered to them wherever they happened to be.

"Our challenge is to break away from a model that puts technology at the centre," DEMO producer Chris Shipley said in kicking off the conference Wednesday. Instead, she suggested, successful startups would "shift to a model with people at the centre."

1,000 Years of Global Warming

2007-02-01T05:09:00.000-08:00

The CTV.ca News Staff write:

Humans have already left such a deep footprint on the environment that the effects of global warming will last for the next 1,000 years, according to a draft copy of a new report.

The Globe and Mail obtained an early version of the climate change study being prepared by the world's leading scientists, and reported that little doubt remains that the planet is getting hotter.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change will release the report on Friday at a news conference in Paris, while a simultaneous conference will be held in Ottawa.

The report says heat waves, droughts and rain storms, as well as violent typhoons and hurricanes, will become more frequent.

The report paints a startling picture of the effects of climate change and says evidence of the phenomenon is now "unequivocal."

It says human influence on the atmosphere during the 21st century alone will propel global warming for another 1,000 years, based on estimates of how long it will take nature to clean the air of gases that contribute to climate change.

Among the other findings, the report states that the last half-century was probably the hottest in at least the past 1,300 years. And in 11 of the past 12 years, temperatures were among the highest since the 1850s, when accurate temperature measurements were first set down.

"Warming of the climate system is unequivocal, as is now evident from increases in global average air and ocean temperatures, melting of snow and ice, and rising sea level," says the draft. The document is being reviewed in Paris.

It is the fourth report to be issued by the group of 2,000 global experts organized by the UN, including many from Canada.

The first report was issued in 1990. Since then, the panel's stance on global warming -- and the notion that it is being brought on in large part by deforestation, large scale agriculture and burning of fossil fuels -- has become more established.

The IPPC's first report suggested global warming might be under way. In 1995, the second report said it was likely that global warming was happening. In 2001, the third report suggested scientists were pretty sure human behaviour was impacting the climate.

But the tone of the newest report suggests there's nothing left to argue and climate change is now a stark reality.

Evidence of the phenomenon is being seen almost everywhere on the planet, from mountain tops, where glaciers are shrinking, to the bottom of the oceans, where average water temperatures are increasing as far as 3,000 metres below the surface.

The strong tone of the IPCC report should eliminate any lingering doubts that global warming is really happening, say some environmentalists who are calling on politicians to take more drastic action to limit greenhouse gas emissions.

"There is no more reason to delay," John Bennett, spokesman for the Climate Action Network Canada told The Globe. "We need the policies, regulations, and programs to reduce emissions and we need to do it with the same kind of urgency that we would use to fight a war."

The draft predicts the following developments will occur as the ongoing results of global warming:

Arctic and Antarctic sea ice will continue to shrink and late summer sea ice in the Arctic could disappear almost entirely by the latter part of the 21st century;
Droughts, along with heat waves and storms involving heavy precipitation will continue to become more common;
There will be fewer hurricanes, but the ones that do develop will be more powerful;
The planet's temperatures in 2090-99 are likely to be 1.7 degrees to 4 degrees warmer than the period from 1980-1999;
According to current predictions, global warming of 1.9 to 4.6 degrees would lead to a near-complete elimination of the Greenland ice sheet and a rise in sea levels of about 7 metres, if sustained for millennia.

Canadian Spam

2007-02-01T04:54:00.000-08:00

Neil Springer of CANOE Technology writes:

Spammers are getting craftier by the minute. From pretending to be your best friend to the alluring promise of cheap Viagra, it seems that they have unlimited means for fooling people into opening spam e-mails.
As it turns out, Canada is now a favourite among spammers.
Due to the booming industry of online-Canadian pharmacies selling their product south of the border, "Canadian online drugstore” is the second-most used subject line for spam e-mails, right behind "Re: hi.”
Such is the information released by IBM Internet Security Systems’ X-Force research team. The report’s main focus is to determine the increase in exploited software vulnerabilities over the last year.
As it turns out spam and other vulnerabilities rose almost 40 per cent since 2005. According to Jordan Kalpin, Canadian Regional Director for IBM ISS, "high impact” vulnerabilities have dropped over the last year but these numbers are still alarming for Canadians.
"In terms of the total amount of e-mail traffic on the Internet, Canada and the U.S. are the worst for percentage of spam,” Kalpin said. "77 per cent of the e-mail traffic in Canada and the U.S. is spam. So it’s a huge problem and it continues to be a huge problem despite any legislation passed. All spammers need to do is just locate somewhere offshore where that legislation doesn’t exist.
Kalpin attributes the increase in spam to hackers flexing their creative muscles, thinking of new and innovative ways to infect computers. One of which is image-based spam, where code is attached to aspects of a graphic.
"There’s been a huge flood of picture-based spam,” Kalpin said. "The anti-spam people got smart and they started scanning the picture, but then the spammers started doing all kinds of crazy things to it.”
This can include such methods as attaching malicious code to colours and shades in an image. Many types of anti-spam software are unable to read the difference between certain colours, such as shades of light blue and light pink.
Kalpin said the last few years have shown that there is potentially big money in the spamming game.
"The people who are responsible for hacking and creating malicious code are no longer doing it as a hobby,” he said. "They’re actually doing it as a big business to make lots of money. So it’s becoming a commercial enterprise, albeit an illegal one.
"They’re actually developing code that’s very refined looking. It looks as good as any application from any of the big software suppliers out there and it comes with help files and pull-down menus to make it as easy as possible for people to use. They’re selling it to the highest bidder – organized crime, hacking organizations, terrorist organizations, to anybody who wants to extort or be a nuisance. So they have distribution channels just like a business would.”
According to the report, the problem has yet to reach its peak. For Canadians, this could mean a lot of headache.
"Canadians are as vulnerable as anywhere else,” Kalpin said. "Sometimes we like to think that we’re not the U.S., so we’re not vulnerable. But because of this online world that we live in, we are as vulnerable, if not more vulnerable than the U.S. Since the U.S. is such a target, they have made more investments in security, whereas we’ve lagged a little bit.”
Kalpin said it is important to have solid anti-virus and security features on a computer, but education is equally important.
"Home users have got to have really solid anti-virus and security packages on their computers and they need to scan their computers on a regular basis. They also need to educate their families on what they should do and what they shouldn’t do on the Internet.”

[To the tune of Billy Talent, "Falling Leaves".]