Tag Archives: Handhelds

Kill your phone

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Apple and Google aim to track users’ phones with GPS and W-Fi trangulation.

Photo: CC/husin.sani

Google’s new service, Latitude, lets people spy on each other, by tracking their target’ GPS receivers. Now Apple is rumored to be adding Wi-Fi triangulation to the Mac OS.

OS X Snow Leopard to get WiFi triangulation, more multitouch control? – SlashGear

Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard could introduce WiFi triangulation, used to estimate geographical location, in a crossover of the technology from the iPhone to the MacBook range. The system- which is part of the CoreLocation framework in the iPhone SDK – will presumably be used to give general location information to navigation software such as Google Maps, as the first-generation iPhone did to compensate for its lack of true GPS.

Nokia phone to simulate textures

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Through its touchscreen, the Eitri will add the sense of touch to human encounters via the internet.

CC/Stéphane S.

The old interface. Photo: CC/Stéphane S.

The touchscreen model of interacting with a mobile phone may appear to be attractive to some but there are many consumers who swear by the tactile feel of a good responsive button. Nokia seems to be working on its very own Haptic feedback mechanism for its new line of touch-enabled phones. The details of this technology are sketchy but there is talk of a new phone from the Nokia stable codenamed ‘Eitri’.

via Nokia working on haptic technology touchscreens – Newlaunches.com

Super RFID tags might "Impinj" on privacy

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Impinj, an RFID chip maker with a provocative name has developed a new chip that requires very little energy to be activated by a remote reader. (Image: from the Impinj website.)

The chip, called Monza, has a read range 40 percent greater than most currently used to track people and consumer goods

In other words, Monza chips can be read at distances beyond forty feet, conceivably making it easier for spies with handheld readers to hide around corners, or distances up to a quarter of a block away from their targets.

Low-cost RFIDs are called passive, because they draw power from the “read” signal from a reader device.

Impinj says the chips, which overcome water, metal and other RF-disrupting materials, are suitable for tagging individual store items. That will turn a can of Coke, a pack of smokes, into a tracking device.

RFID Journal – - RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) Technology News & Features
March 27, 2008—With an eye toward supporting the tagging of products at the item level and at the point of manufacture, RFID chipmaker Impinj unveiled today a new version of its Monza chip made for passive UHF, EPC Gen 2 tags. Called the Monza 3, the chip is significantly more sensitive to radio frequency signals than leading Gen 2 chips from other manufacturers, as well as the currently available Monza 2 chip, which Impinj released in 2006, says Impinj president and CEO Bill Colleran, adding that this increase in sensitivity should translate into better-performing RFID tags.

Report: Travelers love being scanned

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Happy to help: The U.S. Department of Homeland Security and Continental Airlines tell USA Today that customers can aid the fight against terrorism by allowing security personnel to scan their mobile phones. Continental says travelers love “the convenience.”

The Transportation Security Administration’s scheme to scan mobile phones instead of boarding passes strikes me as highly hackable.

More significantly, it provides Homeland Security an excuse to point scanners at travelers’ mobile devices, which often contain their personal, and sensitive, private information.

Mark my words: this three-month pilot project (see below) is just the first of many that Homeland Security will launch to gain further access to the contents of mobile phones, even to commandeer them for intelligence and data gathering.

From USA Today, today:

The two-dimensional bar code, a jumble of squares and rectangles, stores the passenger’s name and flight information. A TSA screener will confirm the bar code’s authenticity with a handheld scanner. Passengers still need to show photo identification. The electronic boarding pass also works at airport gates.

My question is: What else can that handheld TSA scanner scan?

–  Mark Baard

clipped from www.usatoday.com
Cellphone could be boarding pass, too

By Barbara De Lollis, USA TODAY

Continental Airlines passengers in Houston will be able to board flights using just a cellphone or personal-digital assistant instead of a regular boarding pass in a three-month test program launched Tuesday at Bush Intercontinental Airport. The program could expand to airlines and airports nationwide.

U.S. city preps wireless surveillance

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They’re everywhere: Wireless mesh networks were meant to serve the have-nots of the digital age. Instead, routers hanging from lampposts and streetlights (many of them with cameras) will aid in government surveillance.

by Mark Baard

Boston officials this week announced they are adjusting plans for internet access to the poor: officials now say they will use the city’s municipal Wi-Fi network to keep a closer eye on the people, too.

Boston joins Providence and San Francisco, and dozens of other U.S. cities constructing wireless networks, ostensibly to bridge the so-called rich-poor “internet divide.” Many are also using the networks to aid police and domestic intelligence efforts.

Boston Mayor Tom Menino this week said that muni Wi-Fi will give poor kids “access to a new world of information they wouldn’t have in the past,” according to the Boston Globe (link and excerpt, bel0w).

But Boston city officials, citing delays and in the muni Wi-Fi network, said they want the OpenAirBoston network to serve “parking enforcement workers or health inspectors, using tablet personal computers.”

“We’re trying to find some city services we can test,” said Bill Oates, the city’s chief information officer, according to the Globe.

The move will also help Boston qualify for Homeland Security funds.

Many U.S. city officials (even in Philadelphia, once considered a success story) now admit to missteps in their plans to make the government the people’s internet service provider.

Philadelphians will have to pay more than the were told for low-cost wireless internet access, for example. Many of the officials responsible for the bad planning have flown the coop–they now work for the Wi-Fi consulting firm they initially hired on behalf of taxpayers.

clipped from www.boston.com

Technology, funding gap slow Hub’s WiFi effort

Full coverage not likely in 2008
OpenAirBoston has enlisted and trained 15 “first families” in Grove Hall to help test the network and provide feedback to city officials. The low-income neighborhood has about 8,000 households, with a quarter estimated to have computers. It was chosen for the pilot as part of an effort to bridge the “digital divide” with affluent districts where computers and high-speed Internet access are more common.

New York Times: Let computers think for us

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David Brooks (left) argues in his latest New York Times column that people should let cell phones, media players and personal computers do our thinking for us.

Such devices, Brooks says, tongue-in-cheek, can lighten our cognitive loads, by cultivating our media tastes for us.

Internet services such as Google can also fill the gaps in the memories of both the young and old, which have already been compromised by technology.

In the “The Outsourced Brain,” Brooks, tongue-in-cheek, describes a “romantic attachment” to his car’s Global Positioning System navigation device, which eliminates the need for him to remember directions.

Brooks is making a satirical cultural observation–that individuals are routinely tapping artificially intelligent agents and databases (such as the notoriously corrupt, and inaccurate, Wikipedia) to compensate for their memory lapses, even their lack of creativity.

So-called internet “music discovery services,” for example, suggest new songs for your library, based upon the contents of your computer hard drive. (I have written about some of these services in my Boston Globe column.)

Outsourcing our brains to the digital “external mind” could damage our original grey matter, which transhumanists clinically refer to as our “wetware,” some neuroscientists believe.

Brooks presents his piece as satire. But his advertising industry contacts clearly expect to benefit from the wetware-to-hardware migration.

Those contacts include brand managers for several mobile phone companies. Their aim: to turn consumers “brand fanatics”–people who are addicted to particular products and services. Continue reading →

VTech shooting aftermath: Government-controlled flashmobs

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Message received: Emergency text messages can herd people into target areas

The U.S. government, through its sponsored media outlets (see link and excerpt, below), is pushing for a requirement that students carry mobile devices to receive text messages from central authorities.

But as a I report in an upcoming issue of Glenn Beck’s Fusion Magazine, rogue authorities and terrorists themselves may be able to use SMS (for short messaging service) to herd people into traps, where gunmen or explosives may be awaiting them.

Also, as Alan Watt listeners and parallelnormal community members already know, British military authorities have already suggested that so-called flashmobs (which use SMS) are in the process of  being weaponized.

clipped from www.pbs.org

 Virginia Tech: Yet Another Wake-Up Call for Better Emergency Preparedness

[Almost] every cell phone available today is able to send and receive SMS text messages. SMS infrastructure generally holds up better in times of crisis than email, and it automatically appears on your phone’s screen when you receive one.
[I] have no doubt that universities that don’t have mandatory cell phone requirements or SMS alert systems are going to take the idea a lot more seriously now.

Now videocasting: Tech Lab with Mark Baard

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mark.jpg

The Boston Globe last week piloted “Tech Lab with Mark Baard,” a weekly video program at Boston.com featuring some of the technologies I cover in my column. We’re starting off in the Tech Graveyard, “where old technology goes to die,” in the Globe’s basement. In the coming weeks, we’ll move into the field, visiting university labs and tech firms.

Let me know what you all think of this thing!

Pocket-sized psychiatrist (from my Globe column today)

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People on psychiatric meds often attribute any mental health improvements to their own genius. But a new AI counselor from Northeastern U. challenges you to take that pill you don’t think you need.

clipped from www.boston.com

Digital ‘counselor’ minds your meds

 
Only 50 percent of medicines are taken as directed, says Northeastern University computer and information science professor Timothy Bickmore. He hopes his virtual “relational agent,” which displays the animated face of a counselor on a desktop or PDA, can challenge the foolish idea that you’ll be just fine without your heart medicine.
The PDA agent “talks” to you via a text balloon, to help ensure your privacy in public places. (You may not want your hand-held blurting out, “Did you take your Zoloft today?”) The desktop version has a synthesized voice.
Bickmore is trying to replicate some of the “therapeutic alliance” between patients and doctors and counselors. The relational agent, he says, “is all about reach and availability.”

Blingplayer adds ice to your high-tech ensemble

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mrbling01300dpi.jpg

From my Boston Globe column this week, a glittering mobile media device. Also: My takes on the blogging tool Clipmarks, and the Nokia 5300 XpressMusic Phone.

clipped from www.boston.com
Your track suit and flashy pot leaf medallions say Ali G, but your flat, white iPod says Borat.Now you can add an iced-out MP3 Blingplayer, with a metallic chain, to your wardrobe. It may even get you noticed at the next BET Spring Bling show.Next month MediaReady Inc. (mediareadyinc.com) will release two “jeweled-out” versions of the 2GB media player, the Dogtag and Skull ‘N’ Bones.

With a suggested retail price of $200, I’m thinking faux jewels.