The latest discussion on the latest technology
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BBC news reveals a camera that can “see” explosives, drugs and weapons hidden under clothing from 25 metres has been invented, which builds on the idea that all objects emit terahertz radiation.
A camera that can The ThruVision system could be deployed at airports, railway stations or other public spaces.
It is based on so-called “terahertz”, or T-ray, technology, normally used by astronomers to study dying stars.
Although it is able to see through clothes it does not reveal “body detail” or subject people to “harmful radiation”, according to the designers.
“It is totally and utterly passive - it receives only,” said a spokesperson for Thruvision.
The portable camera, which has already been sold to the Dubai Mercantile Exchange and Canary Wharf in London, will be shown off at the Home Office scientific development branch’s annual exhibition later this week.
Body glow
Unlike current security systems that use X-rays, the ThruVision system exploits terahertz rays, or T-rays.
This electromagnetic radiation is a form of low level energy emitted by all people and objects.
These are able to pass through clothing, paper, ceramics and wood but are blocked by metal and water.
The system works by collecting these waves and processing them to form an image which can reveal concealed objects.
“If I were to look at you in terahertz you would appear to glow like a light bulb and different objects glow less brightly or more brightly,” said the firm’s spokesperson.
“You see a silhouette of the form but you don’t see surface anatomical effects.”
In addition, the system does not involve any of the “harmful radiation associated with traditional X-ray security screening”, according to the firm.
The company has made previous versions of the camera, but the T5000, as it is known, is the first that works both indoors and out.
The system exploits technology originally developed at the government owned Rutherford Appleton Laboratory (RAL) in Oxfordshire.
“Astronomers use T-ray cameras that can see through dust and clouds in space, revealing what lies beyond,” explained Dr Liz Towns-Andrews, of the Science and Technology Facilities Council which runs RAL.
Other terahertz systems, developed by companies such as TeraView, are used to probe the structure of pharmaceutical compounds.
Not exactly what how we would like it to work… right?
Google has won unconditional approval from the European Commission to buy rival web advertising firm DoubleClick for $3.1 billion, despite objections from rivals and privacy advocates.
Google has already won approval from US antitrust authorities. “The Commission’s in-depth market investigation found that Google and DoubleClick were not exerting major competitive constraints on each other’s activities and could, therefore, not be considered as competitors at the moment,” the Commission claims in a statement.
The Commission also claims the combined company would lack the power to marginalise Google’s competitors in “ad serving”, which uses software to help advertisers target potential customers. At the same time, it helps advertisers sell blank space on their websites.
Google has by far the strongest position in web search in Europe, and the acquisition drew opposition from competitors such as Microsoft and Yahoo.
Privacy advocates complained that the deal would allow the two companies to combine their different methods of gathering information about the habits of web surfers.
As much as I like Google, I have a distinct sinking feeling that they are losing sight of their original mantra “don’t be evil”…
It appears that Microsoft might be feeling the pressure from it’s main rival the PS3; especially now that HD-DVD
has lost, and the PS3 is currently the best value Blu-ray player.
The German edition of The Financial Times is claiming the Xbox 360 Arcade has dropped by EUR 80 across Europe, GamesIndustry.biz reports.
That takes it down to EUR 199, while the Premium console package will sell for EUR 299 - down from EUR 339.
The report made no mention of the Xbox 360 Elite, which is currently on sale for around EUR 449.
Microsoft has yet to confirm the price cut officially.
Last week the retail community suggested a price cut was due, with some reports indicating all models would drop by EUR 50 on 14th March.
Lowering the Xbox 360 Arcade price to EUR 199 would make it the cheapest console in the market: EUR 50 below that of Nintendo’s Wii.
Microsoft has yet to respond to requests for comment.
It’s perhaps fair to say that the iPhone hasn’t taken off in the ways that Apple would have probably liked it to, especially in the UK. The price of the device, not to mention the 18 month contract with only one provider, are most likely the two facts deterring many mobile phone users against ‘upgrading’ their devices. However, what is probably overlooked most of all, is the lack of take up in ‘Enterprise’ environments, and the device’s usefulness in helping businesses like the Blackberry, and less so, the Windows Mobile phone, are achieving.
On Thursday, Apple announced that the iPhone will support push email, by connecting to your business’ Microsoft Exchange Server; a sure welcomed feature by most companies. The other new features that will be available in software version 2.0, will include push contacts, push calendar, global address lists, WPA2, enforced security policies, more VPN protocols, device configuration, and remote wipe.
This is sounding very much like a Windows Mobile 6 device, but a lot prettier?
A great addition, which should strengthen Apple dominance
Businesses will most definitely consider the iPhone now along with the Blackberry alternative. Most likely, most companies will continue to be brand loyal with the Blackberries, but for businesses not currently taking advantage of push email, those will most likely consider the Apple Brand.
What else is new for the iPhone
Along with the release of iPhone 2.0 Software, software developers will be able to create applications on the device. Games, in-house applications, free, and other commercial applications will be part of the line up.
iPlayer comes to iPhone
The BBC announced on Friday that the BBC iPlayer, which shows BBC TV programmes for up to a week after they were first player, will be available on the iPhone.
“The iPhone and iPod touch are able to stream shows from the iPlayer website over Wi-Fi networks. The iPhone cannot stream BBC video over the cell network. A BBC developer said that the corporation was currently working on other versions of the iPlayer for “many more” devices.”
The corporation has agreed a deal with Wi-Fi firm The Cloud to provide all BBC online services for free at its 7,500 hotspots.
From the BBC news website.
The iPhone is slowly starting to become the phone that it should have been at the start. The design and multi-touch screen were the real excitements for consumers during the launch, but the phone was significantly weak on the technological front of things. The recent additions, (apart from the 16GB upgrade to the hard drive), to the iPhone have all been software related, what is needed next is the 3.5G and GPS support. Without this, the iPhone will simply not keep up with competition, and no matter what software support is on the phone, it will need these hardware additions to become one of the most popular phone in the world.
Apart from the hardware and software support, Apple might want to think about their relationship with other network providers and the costs and lengths of the contracts; but that’s another story! 
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A revolutionary medical imaging technology will soon allow doctors to ‘feel’ your organs without having to resort to surgery.
Computer image analysis is already used to create three-dimensional models of organs like the liver, but researchers in Sweden have developed a special piece of equipment that will allow radiologists to “touch” those models. This is the first time the technology, called haptics, has been developed to help the diagnosis and treatment of a variety of ailments, including cancer.
The equipment replaces the traditional computer mouse and keyboard with a pen-like instrument that is attached to the computer via a frame. As the user “touches” the virtual organ with the instrument, it responds as if it was being run along the real organ surface. It allows doctors to conduct a “virtual” examination of the organs by exploring a three-dimensional image on a display screen with both touch and vision.
While the technology is in its infancy, this “virtual” examination clearly holds the potential to make a serious contribution to the field of diagnostics.
One can only imagine what this technology will turn into, as a result of giving into consumer demand. Who knows what else people might want to ‘touch’?
When I saw this I couldn’t help thinking “about time” - powerline adaptors, whilst insanely useful are traditionally bulky and awkward:
You know the dilemma. You need a network at home. You find WiFi doesn’t cut it and CAT-5 cabling is a major pain to install.
En-Twyn, a company from London, have a prototype unit showing at CeBit on the Intellon stand (it uses the latest generation of Intellon Powerline chips).
What makes their En-Compass product different is that all of the electronics are incorporated into the back of the socket. It fits into a standard mains back box and you don’t see anything hanging out of the front.
We’ve written about the idea for years, giving an introduction to HomePlug back in 2003 and have reviewed products that plug into the mains of your house, like the LEA Universal NetPlug over the years.
The problem with current Powerline devices is that they plug into power sockets - sticking out.
By contrast, the En-Compass is built into the socket. It’s one of those products that you look at and just say, “Of course!”
With research pointing to 1 in 3 Euro Homes having and AV/IT Network by 2010 En-Twyn look like they could be on to a pretty good thing.
En-Compass: Powerline In A Power SocketPrototype shows the way
The prototype shown is built into a standard 2 gang socket and has 2 (switched) Ethernet ports on the fascia. There are LEDs on the Ethernet ports indicating activity, link and speed. The socket fascia also has LEDs indicating sync, activity and power for the Powerline electronics and a sync/reset button (one press for sync, long press for reset).Since the socket fits into a standard back box, all that’s required to install is to replace existing sockets with the new one (turning the electricity off at the fuse box or circuit breaker first generally reduces the chance of being electrocuted!).
Two sockets need to be installed to make a network - one as the source of the network, they other the destination. On powering-up, the Powerline electronics should look for other devices and automatically mesh any units found. The current generation of units support up to 32 devices in any one network (i.e. 32 sockets - 64 Ethernet ports), but we understand that this is also likely to increase.
Different networks can be selected allowing more devices if necessary, just as long as there are 32 devices per network (the networks can then be externally connected together using an Ethernet switch).
We understand that other interfaces are going to be supported in future such as video and various short-range radio technologies.
What this means is that a broadband connection that is in one room of a house can be made available to any other rooms in the house, just using the electrical wiring - and without plug-clutter (we should trademark that one!)
No, you can’t buy it yet
We weren’t quite sure, so we asked a representative for En-Twyn if both an electrical plug and Ethernet could be installed at the same time — it looked a little close from the pictures. They assure us this has been tested to work just fine.They’ve also got another prototype in the works that rotates the Ethernet socket 90 degrees and drops it down a little.
Though the prototypes are on display, they are just that at this stage. En-Twyn tell us that they’re looking to get the units manufactured either directly or with partners.
So don’t go trying to buy one just yet. But tune back and we’ll tell you when they get any closer - this is a one that we’ll be keeping a close eye on.
Microsoft has released the first beta version of Internet Explorer 8 for download, demonstrating its new features at the MIX08 conference in Las Vegas.
One new feature called Activities allows users to combine web services within one tab. For example, a Windows Live Maps “Activity” can be used to superimpose a map over a postal address within a website.Other updates include a crash recovery feature that saves a session, allowing any open tabs to be restored after a browser or system crash, and an improved phishing filter.
However, Internet Explorer 8 will focus more on improved compliance
with web standards than providing a raft of new features, and many improvements to the interface that are on the way are missing from this first developer-orientated beta.
“A lot of the end user or consumer features are not featured on this build because it really is targeted at the developers and the designers,” says Matthew Lepsen of the Internet Explorer development team.
Microsoft claims that Internet Explorer 8 will be its most standards-compliant browser to date, as part of its recent interoperability pledge.
“IE8 has been significantly enhanced, and was designed with great support for current internet standards,” claims Ray Ozzie, Microsoft chief software architect.
“This is evidenced by the fact that even in its first beta, IE8 correctly renders the popular test known as ‘Acid2′, which was created by the web community to promote real-world interoperability.”
IE8 is definitely a huge step forward for Microsoft, and their recent announcement to default to standards mode is fantastic.
It appears that ‘locking’ your laptop or leaving it in ‘hibernation’ mode doesn’t appear to protect your encrypted data.
Encrypted information held on a laptop is more vulnerable than previously thought, US research has shown.
Scientists have shown that it is possible to recover the key that unscrambles data from a PC’s memory.
It was previously thought that data held in so-called “volatile memory” was only retained for a few seconds after the machine was switched off.
But the team found that data including encryption keys could be held and retrieved for up to several minutes.
“It was widely believed that when you cut the power to the computer that the information in the volatile memory would disappear, and what we found was that was not the case,” Professor Edward Felten of the University of Princeton told BBC World Service’s Digital Planet programme.
Volatile memory is typically used in random access memory (RAM), which is used as temporary storage for programs and data when the computer is switched on.
The UK’s communication networks could be at risk from Chinese backdoors hidden in firmware, according to a security company.
SecureTest believes spyware could be easily built into Asian-manufactured devices such as switches and routers, providing a simple backdoor for companies or governments in the Far East to listen in on communications.
“Organisations should change their security policies and procedures immediately,” says Ken Munro, managing director of SecureTest. “This is a very real loophole that needs closing. The government needs to act fast.”
“Would they buy a missile from China, then deploy it untested into a Western missile silo and expect it to function when directed at the Far East? That’s essentially what they’re doing by installing network infrastructure produced in the Far East, such as switches and routers, untested into government and corporate networks.”
Late last year MI5 sent a letter to 300 UK companies warning of the threat from Chinese hackers attempting to steal sensitive data. Reports at the time suggested that both Rolls Royce and Royal Dutch Shell had been subjected to “sustained spying assaults”.
The issue has been debated by government for some time. In 2001, the then foreign secretary Robin Cook, warned that international computer espionage could pose a bigger threat to the UK than terrorism.
