Reining in Unstructured
Data
U.S. Losing Tech Lead,
Lobby Warns
The U.S. needs major investments in education, research and
development, and broadband technology deployment in order to
maintain its global tech leadership, warned TechNet, a
lobbying coalition representing roughly 200 high-tech leaders.
TechNet CEO Rick White and other TechNet ...
[read more]
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Doctors' Journal Says
Computing Is No Panacea
Research papers and an editorial in the latest issue of the
Journal of the American Medical Association refute the Bush
administration's belief that the U.S. health care system's
broad adoption of information technology will reduce medical
errors, improve care, and cut costs. Principal author of ...
[read more]
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Software Organizes Email By
Task
University College Dublin and IBM researchers are
developing email organization software that groups messages
according to activity, such as arranging travel, reporting
expenses, or managing online auctions. The goal is to allow
nontechnical users to customize their computing ...
[read more]
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Bringing the Past Back to
Life
IST's LIFEPLUS project has yielded a prototype augmented
reality (AR) system that reconstructs ancient Pompeiian
frescos and enhances them with virtual 3D plants, animals, and
people. Users immerse themselves in the recreation with a
head-mounted display equipped with a small camera that ...
[read more]
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New Software May Offer a
Rainbow of Sound
Vision-impaired Cornell University graduate student Victor
Wong has developed image-to-sound software that can
communicate colors in a manner that blind people can
understand. Such an invention is important to Wong's doctoral
research, in which reading color-scaled weather maps is a ...
[read more]
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RFID Invades the
Capital
Some 40,000 new biometric ID cards equipped with radio
frequency identification (RFID) and Bluetooth technology will
be distributed to Homeland Security Department personnel and
contractors this year, beginning in May. The RFID and
Bluetooth components will facilitate communication ...
[read more]
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Fringes vs. Basics in
Silicon Valley
Critics at Electronic Arts and other Silicon Valley
companies complain that fringe benefits such as gyms, bonuses,
and stock options belie a dearth of tangible benefits such as
overtime pay. Stock options have lost much of their allure
with the collapse of the tech boom and the advent of new ...
[read more]
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A Quantum Leap for Computer
Security
The principle behind quantum cryptography is that data
transmitted in the form of photons cannot be observed without
disrupting the photons' state, thus alerting both sender and
recipient to an eavesdropper's presence. An average email or
Web page currently uses an encryption key of about 40 ...
[read more]
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Microsoft Notebook:
Intelligent Software Aims to Give Users Peace of
Mind
Microsoft Research's Adaptive Systems and Interaction group
is developing software that perceives the surrounding
environment and that can reason and adjust to situations in
real time through experiential learning. Microsoft senior
researcher and group manager Eric Horvitz foresees a time when
...
[read more]
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Coming to Grips With
Technology
Germany's Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft group will exhibit its
Personal Environment Controller (PECo), an all-in-one remote
control unit, at the CeBIT ICT fair in Hanover this month.
PECo is designed to reduce the complexity of conferencing,
mobile office, or intelligent household ...
[read more]
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Camera Phones Recognize
Their Owner
Japan-based Omron has developed software that can enable
digital camera-equipped cell phones to recognize the face of
their owners to help ensure that any sensitive information
they carry is not compromised should the phones be lost or
stolen. The OKAO Vision Face Recognition Sensor ...
[read more]
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Will Social Databases Give
Way to Social Protocols?
The XHTML Friends Network (XFN) microformat could eliminate
the need for proprietary social networking services such as
LinkedIn, Orkut, and Plaxo, if XFN was widely adopted among
users and blog and Web presence authoring tools, writes ZDNet
commentator David Berlind in his blog. Currently, the ...
[read more]
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Machines Not Lost in
Translation
The Phraselator is a handheld one-way translation device
currently used by military personnel in the Middle East; the
device is also being tested by U.S. law enforcement officials
and corrections officers in 11 states and undergoing
assessment in county health departments and hospital emergency
...
[read more]
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Mapping the Internet:
Towsley Reveals the Hidden Characteristics of a Vast and
Complex Global Network
University of Massachusetts Amherst (UMass) computer
science professor and ACM Fellow Don Towsley is developing
techniques for Internet measurement and internal network data
flow analysis. His network tomography technology, created in
conjunction with AT&T Labs and the UMass mathematics ...
[read more]
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Moving Toward
Self-Awareness
As IT systems increase their network exposure and offer
more on-demand resources, security and management systems are
needed that use predictive modeling, opines MessagingGroup
consultant Mark Willoughby. Services, infrastructure, storage,
applications, content, compliance, devices, and ...
[read more]
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Unleashing the Potential
of Wireless Broadband
Former FCC Chairman Reed E. Hundt writes that the FCC and
Congress should apply themselves to opening up the
electromagnetic spectrum--which TV broadcasters jealously
guard--to wireless broadband providers, which will trigger a
cascade of new services that promise to revolutionize ...
[read more]
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Q&A: The Secure
Enterprise Interview
Former Department of Homeland Security cybersecurity
director Amit Yoran says his mission while at the department
was to create a cybersecurity division, recruit staff for the
division, and implement programs and activities that will take
the division closer to its goals. With that ...
[read more]
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Identity Management,
Access Specs Are Rolling Along
In an environment where federated identity capabilities are
highly sought after, vendors are quickly realizing that
sustaining their marketplace viability depends on making
interoperable products. IBM's recent entry into the Liberty
Alliance Project for developing an open federated network ...
[read more]
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Reining in Unstructured
Data
Managing unstructured data has become a top corporate
priority as a result of the tech industry bubble's implosion
and regulatory compliance, says META Group analyst Andrew
Warzecha. Experts say that unstructured data accounts for over
80 percent of the information companies generate, a ...
[read more]
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