Researchers at Purdue have devised nano-lightning storms as a way to cool computer chips.
In the Purdue device, an array of carbon nanotubes–long, thin strands of specialized carbon molecules–would be placed near a chip. A negative charge would be applied to some of the nanotubes, which would cause electrons to be emitted. When the electrons mix with the surrounding air, the air becomes ionized. The microscopic cloud of ionized air then leads to an imbalance of charge in the micro-atmosphere, and lightning results. It’s microscopic lightning, but the principle is the same as in an electrical storm.
Meanwhile, the cloud of electrons would be alternatively attracted to and repelled by adjacent electrodes. Alternating the voltages on the electrodes creates a cooling breeze because the moving cloud stirs the air.
Devices chip, computer, cooling, nanotech
Carrying around 500 books is getting a lot lighter.
The display has a resolution of 170 pixels per inch, which E-Ink says is comparable to the print quality of newspaper.
Unlike more familiar LCD displays, the screen can be read at almost any angle and in bright sunlight as it uses tiny charged beads to form letters and images. …
The Librie will weigh just over 300g including batteries and front cover and will run off four AAA batteries.
E-Ink says the display only draws on battery power when text is refreshed which means it will be able to display about 10,000 pages before the batteries need changing.
The device is 13mm thick and its screen measures 15cm diagonally.
It also includes a qwerty keyboard, USB 2.0 connector and a slot for Sony Memory Sticks.
Devices digital paper, display, mobileTech
Documenting your life has never been easier. Cell phones with cameras are now the tool of crime fighters everywhere…
Cell phones that can take pictures are becoming a more common way for victims and other witnesses to help police capture criminals. Because the phones are so portable and always on, it takes only a moment to photograph the face or license plate of someone in the act of a crime. …
On the other hand, camera phones have gotten a bad rap because of reports they’ve been used in locker rooms and strip clubs to capture nude images that get posted on the Internet, said Alan Reiter, who runs the Web log cameraphonereport.com, which gathers information about wireless photography.
Their real impact will be in the future, when millions of phone users will be able to document any event at any time.
Devices camera, cell phone, crime, mobileTech, photograph, witness
The magic of Star Trek com badges have come to life! Wearing a Vocera badge, people can touch and talk as they did on TV.
Hitting the badge button and saying a name triggers a powerful server-based application that matches the name spoken with a database entry. It then locates that person on the network, activates their badges and starts the conversation, which takes place using Voice-Over-Internet Protocol or VOIP–meaning the voices are converted to bits and transmitted over a computer network. …
“Once we had a prototype, we started doing research into who might want to use a product like this,” Lang says. “At one point we had nothing more than a bunch of PowerPoint slides, that we showed to health care organizations, and we had nurses in tears saying ‘Where has this been all of my life?’” …
It turns out that communication in a hospital is often an amazingly inefficient affair. … All that time, otherwise lost waiting for instructions or other communication, adds up. One study by the First Consulting Group, a healthcare consultancy based in Long Beach, Calif., found that when the 300-bed St. Agnes Healthcare facility in Baltimore deployed the Vocera system, its nurses saved more than 1,100 hours a year, while the entire organization saved some 3,400 hours.
Devices badges, communicator, healthcare, hospital, mobileTech, voice, VoIP, waiting
New swiss army knife-type tool called Phatbot will lead to new wave of spam and DDOS attacks with P2P-based shared resources.
By some estimates, hundreds of thousands of computers running Microsoft’s Windows operating system have already been infected worldwide. The tool, a program that security researchers have dubbed ‘Phatbot,’ allows its authors to gain control over computers and link them into P2P networks that can be used to send large amounts of spam e-mail messages or to flood Web sites with data in an attempt to knock them offline.
Content access, ddos, denial of service, Microsoft, P2P, shared resources, spam, Windows, zombie
Office computers are being targeted for the vast resources they may tap into.
Richard Turner of RSA Security said the current rash of phishing scams was just the proverbial tip of the iceberg and those who were perpetrating them would turn to the more lucrative field of stealing business secrets.
‘Australian businesses are rapidly opening their networks to remote users, be they employees who want to work from home, customers or those from other companies who share information. As soon as you do this, you need to apply good policy to information systems and business systems,’ said Turner, who has been with RSA for the last eight years.
‘Once this stage is reached, the need to implement well-configured software becomes paramount, in order to provide protection against unauthorised connections.’
Content, Identity business, information management, phishing, Policy, protection, remote
HP is giving Microsoft a run for their money in Asia with a new line of non-MS computers.
The HP computers will use a Linux distribution from Turbolinux and will include the OpenOffice.org 1.1 suite of office productivity software. OpenOffice is designed to be compatible with Microsoft Office.
Turbolinux said its Linux system will be offered on HP computers in 12 Asian locations: China, Hong Kong, Japan, India, Indonesia, South Korea, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Taiwan, Thailand and Vietnam.
The Nihon Keizai Shimbun newspaper, a major business daily, reported Tuesday that sales of the HP Linux PCs will begin in June and shipments could reach 1 million units in the first year.
Content, Devices adoption, Asia, HP, Linux, Microsoft, open source, OpenOffice, productivity, software
Citing this article, in part:
Spanish developer Pablo Soto, whose Blubster and Piolet software have attracted several hundred thousand users, is taking a decidedly different tack. While including strong encryption and some privacy-enhancing features in a new version of the software expected to be released in the next few weeks, he’s also changing the way files are downloaded.
Information such as an MP3 song will still be downloaded from its original source, he said. But a song will be scrambled, and downloaded simply as raw, unintelligible data. This means that no actual copy of a song is being exchanged, he contends.
If downloaders want to turn that data into useable music, their software must seek elsewhere on the file-swapping network for the encryption ‘keys’ that will unlock the data, transforming it back into an MP3. Separating the download of the data and the keys may help protect file sharers from lawsuits, making it more difficult for courts to say exactly which party is responsible for copyright infringement, Soto said.
a mailing list member said:
This reminded me immediately of my favorite RISKS article, “The source of semantic content” (Gat, RISKS-16.87). Perhaps Gat’s questions “Has the law been broken? Who broke it?” will soon be tested in court.
Content copyright, courts, encryption, infringement, MP3, P2P
Four gigabytes in a drive the size of a postage stamp…
The electronics conglomerate’s 0.85-inch HDDs, unveiled in January, have storage capacity of up to four gigabytes and will be used in products such as cellphones and digital camcorders.
Devices gigabytes, hard drive, HDD, miniature, mobileTech, storage
What happens when an album re-mix spawns a re-mix toolkit? Two albums, Beatles White and Jay-Z’s Black, were combined to may DJ Dangermouse’s Grey Album. From that controversial project comes the J-Z Construction Set, which gives users the software and raw material to create new remixes of Black. The mind boggles with potential.
This collection of material is certainly a violation of copyright, yet it points the way to a much richer vision for culture. I would hope that, in the near future, artists and publishers will see the value of releasing not only polished works, but the bits and parts used to create a work, including those parts that were rejected.
Why is this in Digital Home/Office? It’s all about the editor’s pen: the ability to reuse and recast the works of others into intriguing new products and projects, and ultimately about finding your voice in a business world.
Content copyright, mashup, mix, reuse, SOHO