quinta-feira, 05 de agosto de 2004

Body Electric. Skinplex is a new commercial technology that uses the human body as a conductor of data. According to an article in EE Times, the developers, German start-up Ident Technoogy AG, hope to compete with RFID, Bluetooth, and Near Field Communications (NFC) for some applications: Skinplex technology could be used between an identifier worn on the user's body and a receiver integrated into a car, for example. A distinct code is transmitted through touch, the receiver recognizes its dedicated, authorized sender, and the car door is opened, for example. This reminds me of the Personal Area Network research at MIT's Media Lab in the mid-1990s. Neil Gershenfeld and Thomas Zimmerman demonstrated a system where two people could trade electronic business cards by shaking hands. Link (via Carlo Longino at TheFeature) [Boing Boing] 10:06:31 AM

Defcon Wi-Fi shootout results. Wireless tech guru and pal 'o' BoingBoing Frank Keeney sends word of results from the annual WiFi shootout (an event at Defcon that seeks to determine just how far an 802.11 WLAN range can extend). And here are the winners, according to event organizer Dave: 3 teenagers from Ohio used Orinoco Gold 30 milliwatt USB adapters mounted on the feedpoints of two 10 foot dishes, and shot 55.1 miles. Yes, that's fifty-five point one miles! This is a new world's record for an unamplified shot! Complete details will be in a press release, which should come out in the next few days. Link to Wi-Fi Shootout home page. Update: My Wired News colleague Kim Zetter has more here: Link [Boing Boing] 10:04:50 AM

Mobile social software privacy. I wrote a piece for TheFeature.com about UC Berkeley Professor John Canny's work on designing privacy systems for mobile social software (MoSoSo) networks. Another method takes advantage of "the natural incentives that occur in peer communities, as manifest in things like Napster and Gnutella," says Canny. "It does seem within a community you have a few altruistic people who will, for whatever reason, help the community by providing the service, and from a privacy perspective you can do a lot if you can identify some users who are willing to leave a machine online that provides some privacy protection. The rest of the people in the community can use that machine. They don't have to trust the owner of the machine because the algorithm is set up so that the owner of that machine can't get access to that machine anyway, but if they provide this service, they can protect their peers' information from the service provider." Link [Boing Boing] 10:02:06 AM

Group wants to induce downloads. In today's Wired News, a story I filed about P2P Congress -- a coalition of geeks, academics, free-speech advocates, and others who are distributing videos of Senate hearings on the Induce Act to prove two points: that the law would be very damaging to the tech industry, and that peer-to-peer networks can serve the public. Link (Thanks for the screenshot, Gary!) [Boing Boing] 10:00:16 AM

IBM to Build Supercomputer for U.S. Army (Reuters). Reuters - International Business Machines Corp. (IBM.N) said it had been selected to build a supercomputer for the U.S. Department of Defense that help develop advanced weapons for the army. [Yahoo! News - Technology] 9:50:52 AM

© Copyright 2004 Antonio C-Pinto. Last update: 09.09.04; 01:46:07.