Law would force phone makers to add remote kill switches; Apple, Google, and Microsoft have already agreed to implement them.
5 Inexpensive Smartphones: No Perfect Choice
(Click image for larger view and slideshow.)
California is on the brink of becoming the first state to require kill switches in smartphones. The state's senate passed a bill this week mandating the security change, and it is now up to Governor Jerry Brown to sign it and make it law. The state's efforts are laudable, but may be moot at this point.
The law has been years in the making.Lawmakers in California and New York are looking to curb the theft of smartphones, which has spiked in recent years. Smartphones are easy pickings when left unattended on tables in coffee shops, restaurants, and bars, and they are often snatched out of owners' hands by brazen thieves on the street and in subways. According to the NYPD, 8,000 Apple products -- mostly iPhones -- were stolen in New York City during 2013. Some of the robberies led to injuries and even deaths.
The idea behind the kill switch is simple: Make stolen phones unusable. Unusable phones won't score thieves any cash. There's less incentive to steal smartphones if they'll be rendered useless and can't be sold. The kill switch is something device owners can trigger remotely from their desktop or other mobile device, such as a tablet.
The Apple iPhone already has this feature, Find My iPhone, which is part of iOS 7. Earlier this year, law enforcement agencies reported a drop in iPhone thefts after the remote kill switch was added.
In June, both Google and Microsoft announced plans to add theft deterrent tools to Android and Windows Phone, respectively. Google didn't spell out exactly how it intends to implement the kill switch. Microsoft committed to adding a kill switch to all devices running Windows Phone 8 and up. The Windows Phone kill switch will allow owners to: render the smartphone inoperable; remotely wipe personal data from the phone; prevent reactivation without the owner's permission; reverse the inoperability if the phone is recovered; and restore user data if the phone was erased.
[Lots of people will be buying new cell phones soon and will need to protect them from theft. Read Apple iPhone 6 Expected Sept. 9.]
The CTIA Wireless Association, which lobbies for the wireless industry in Washington, voluntarily set up a timeline for theft deterrent tools. All smartphones sold in July 2015 and after will include the tools, whether or not states such as California pass laws requiring them. Microsoft said its theft deterrent will be up and running by then. There's no word from Google on how or when Android will get its version of the remote kill switch, but it has nearly a year to get it up and working properly.
Until the remote kill switch is widely available, smartphone owners can take a number of steps to prevent their devices from walking away unexpectedly. For example, leave the phone in your pocket when walking around, use a passcode, set up the Find My Phone tool, and keep regular backups. If your device is stolen, be sure to report it.
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Eric is a freelance writer for InformationWeek specializing in mobile technologies. View Full Bio
IBM will pour $3 billion into computing and chip materials research over the next five years, as it rethinks computer design and looks to a future that may not involve silicon chips.
The computer design initiative could pave the way for functional quantum and cognitive computers that mimic brain functionality.
“The basic architecture of the computer has remained unchanged since the 1940s. We feel, given the kinds of problems we see today, [that] this is the time to start looking for new forms of computing,” said Supratik Guha, director of physical sciences for IBM Research.
IBM
An IBM chip made using graphene, a single layer of carbon atoms with tremnedous capabilities for conducting heat and electricity.
Silicon design has stalled and the ability to shrink chips is reaching its limit. IBM is looking at graphene, carbon nanotubes and other materials to replace silicon in computers, and will try to develop chips that can be scaled down to the atomic level.
IBM’s goal is to provide the building blocks for systems that can intelligently process vast amounts of data while consuming less power, said Tom Rosamilia, senior vice president for Systems and Technology Group at IBM.
Smart services
Such computers could benefit areas such as cancer research, weather modeling and providing more intelligent services over the cloud. Accelerators like graphics processors are improving computer performance in the short term, but shrinking silicon-based processors to boost performance and reduce power is becoming more complex, Rosamilia said.
IBM
An IBM wafer fabricated using graphene.
“We have in other points of history had to make leaps from one technology to another,” Rosamilia said. “If we don’t start inventing them now, we believe nobody will get there.”
IBM is already making quantum computers and brain-like computers, which have been theorized for decades, but proven difficult to create. Those computers are based on different architectures than those used today, which leads to questions about whether one new type of architecture ought to be preferred over another, Rosamilia said.
IBM could mix and match individual technologies to provide the building blocks for new computer systems, Rosamilia said.
“Some combination will be coming true, and we will be riding those technologies for many years,” Rosamilia said. “You have to plan many years in advance for it. We’re very serious about this.”
The first fruits of the research will likely manifest in high-performance computers, but may eventually come to laptops and desktops, although Rosamilia couldn’t provide a time frame for that.
The investment comes as Moore’s Law runs its course. Intel co-founder Gordon Moore posited that the number of transistors on an integrated circuit would double every two years and while that has held steady, it is expected to be outdated within the next decade. Engineers are rethinking chip design to increase performance, especially as chips go into smaller geometries. Intel is preparing to ship PC chips made using the 14-nanometer process and has plans to move to the 10-nanometer process in the coming years.
What's next?
Chip making was revolutionized when scientists purified silicon in 1950, but it will be harder to etch more features on chips when the 7-nanometer process and beyond, as the industry moves toward the atomic level, Guha said.
“What will replace it at this point is unclear,” Guha said.
IBM
An IBM nanowire.
Carbon nanotubes, which are cylinders made of carbon atoms, show the most promise as a silicon replacement. IBM researchers are shrinking the size of carbon nanotubes, but challenges remain in cooling them down and there is considerable debate around safety concerns. However, there is consensus that technical problems could be solved, Guha said.
Brain and quantum computers also involve research on computer behavior.
IBM is developing computers that mimic brain-like functionality as part of its Synapse program. The computer makes an approximation of how the brain processes information in parallel via trillions of connections, which are the synapses. IBM in 2011 demonstrated a neural chip with programmable and learning synapses that have navigation and pattern recognition abilities. IBM’s goal is to build a neural chip that mimics the human brain, with 10 billion neurons and 100 trillion synapses but that uses just 1 kilowatt of power.
At the heart of quantum computers are quantum bits (qubits), which hold values of 1 and 0, which are unlike bits in conventional computers that are at a state of 1 or 0 at any given time. By storing and sharing data in more states, the qubits could speed up calculations.
Many issues still have to be resolved, including quantum noise, in which qubits are sent into undesirable states, making it difficult to execute programs normally. The only known quantum computer is sold by D-Wave Systems, but IBM’s researchers earlier this yearquestioned the computer’s relation to quantum mechanics, which looks at interaction and behavior of matter on atomic and subatomic levels.
Facebook users have complained for years that the social network's privacy settings are too confusing. For the most part, the company has done little to make them easier to understand -- until recently. Amid increased government regulation and a desire to keep Facebook's user base strong, it appears Mark Zuckerberg and company have had a change of heart.
This week, the social network announced another handful of privacy updates and changes to help you more easily manage your account.
"While some people want to post to everyone, others have told us that they are more comfortable sharing with a smaller group, like just their friends," Facebook wrote in a blog post. "We recognize that it is much worse for someone to accidentally share with everyone when they actually meant to share just with friends, compared with the reverse."
In the past month, Facebook has tested and launched a number of new privacy features -- from additional photo settings to new pop-up alerts if you're about to post publicly. Here's a rundown of Facebook's six most recent privacy changes and what they mean for your account.
1. Additional photo settings Your current profile photo and cover photos have traditionally been public by default. Soon, Facebook will let you change the privacy setting of your old cover photos -- a capability it is gradually rolling out to all users. (Facebook already lets you change the privacy settings of your former profile photos.)
When you receive the update, navigate to your photo albums homepage and open the one titled Cover Photos. To change the audience of a photo, click it, and then hover over the icon next to the date. Choose your new privacy setting for the photo from the dropdown menu.
2. More visible mobile sharing settings When posting to Facebook via a mobile device, Facebook's audience selector has been hidden behind an icon that corresponds with your privacy setting -- a globe if you post publicly, a two-person silhouette to share with friends, and a lock symbol if the post is private, for example.
Facebook will move the audience selector to the top of the update status box in a new "To:" field similar to what you see when you compose an email. This change makes it easier to see who you're about to share something with, which can help prevent unintended sharing.
3. Default settings for new users In the past, when new users joined Facebook, the social network usually set the audience of their posts automatically to public. This left it up to them to change it if they wanted more control. Moving forward, Facebook will
Kristin Burnham currently serves as InformationWeek.com's Senior Editor, covering social media, social business, IT leadership and IT careers. Prior to joining InformationWeek in July 2013, she served in a number of roles at CIO magazine and CIO.com, most recently as senior ... View Full Bio
Imagine a world where people buy products at the store by waving a hand near a sensor, where people “think” up a business report at work rather than typing one up, and where an augmented-reality gets projected in front of our eyes with specialty contact lenses. These ideas are closer to reality than you may realize.
It was only the 1980s and 1990s when science fiction movies portrayed people using handheld devices to navigate city streets or pinpoint one’s own location on Earth. These movies had characters who would state questions to a disembodied computer, which would intelligently provide the answers. They showed families having video-chat calls using flat-panel displays that made the tech geeks of the 1980′s drool.
In barely three decades, many of the things that science fiction writers could only imagine have become reality. Had someone predicted that these technologies would become reality this quickly, they would have been laughed at. Today, no one is laughing.
With the current trend of technical innovation and advancement, now is a good time to explore the state of the art in computer-human technologies, to try and gauge what the world may look like in the next 20 or 30 years.
Implanted Microchip ID
In 1998, British scientist Kevin Warwick had himself implanted with an RFID transmitter to prove out the concept of controlling doors, lights and other devices simply by walking nearby. By 2000, Warwick was able to interface his implant with his own nervous system, allowing him to remotely control a robotic arm. This experiment was detailed in a February 2000 Wired article.
Yes, the technology was real and quite viable back the, and by 2004 the FDA had approved VeriChip, the branded computer chip implant manufactured by Applied Digital Solutions, to be used for medical purposes.
While one would expect the ability to implant a rice-sized RFID device just under the skin of a human to spark a proliferation of products and services enabling card-free and paper-free human identification in places like hospitals, bars and for store purchases – that isn’t at all what happened.
In fact, the backlash was tremendous. Privacy advocates raised alarms about the ability for hackers to intercept someone’s RFID signal and duplicate the device in order to steal someone’s identity (a real concern). Religious extremists proliferated content all throughout the Internet forewarning that VeriChip signaled the approaching Armageddon and the “sign of the beast” (666).
The public outcry against the technology was so great that PositiveID, the company that owned the VeriChip brand in 2010, discontinued all marketing for the product. The public simply was not ready to embrace widespread implanted identification.
Still – the technology and it’s use is moving forward. Legions of body modification “grinders” are actively injecting these things between thumb and forefinger.
One such body hacker by the name of Amal Graafstra got one of the implants, and actively chronicles his installation of various RFID toys that he remotely controls with his implant.
I see Amal’s kind of love of implanted technology growing throughout society, while I see the superstitious fear of it fading away just as fear of most other inventions have faded away over time.
Electronic Hearing Implants
I’m also convinced that implants are going to become integrated with all of our senses, as a way for humans to enhance those senses through the use of advancing computer technologies. As computer systems become more miniaturized, the possibilities in this area multiply.
Take, for example, the field of cochlear implants.
These devices have external processors that is held to the under-the-skin implant by a magnet. The processor transfers audio signals to the implant, which then transmits those signals to an electrode array that gets surgically inserted deep into the cochlear itself. The implant bypasses that part of the cochlear that doesn’t work, and electrically stimulates the nerve fibers to reproduce the sounds.
Today, this kind of surgery seems pretty invasive and extreme, but imagine the day when wireless technologies allow a person to have a single implant inserted into the cochlear, and then a transmitter worn anywhere on the body, or implanted somewhere on the ear itself, could transmit sound directly to the cochlear without any wire necessary.
Seem far fetched? It’s not. Just this year, MIT researchers developed a new microchip that could be implanted into the ear, which could use sensors to detect ossicle vibrations in the inner ear, convert those to an electrical signal, and send that to the electrode inserted into the cochlea. By lowering the power needs of the device, the researchers proposed that the device could be recharged wirelessly, removing the need for the hardware mounted externally on the skull!
In other words, the day of the undetectable bionic ear is here.
Contact Lenses – Bionic Eyes
Google Glasses is all the rage these days, but the real allure of this technology is the concept of augmenting human vision with external information. The idea of wearing a pair of gaudy glasses to accomplish this seems tolerable to many tech geeks, but how cool would it be to simply slip on a pair of contact lenses that accomplish the same thing, but only requiring a really cool-looking pair of shades?
This is exactly what a company by the name of Innovega introduced at CES 2014. That is, a contact lens that basically allows the light of a projected digital image to be superimposed upon the regular light of your normal vision, resulting in a “single integrated image”.
The contact lens “tricks” the eye so that it can see a high resolution, large field-of-view display overlaying your regular vision. It’s clearly the cutting edge of augmented reality technology, and if successful it will finally allow people to see high-resolution digital images and content in a way that Google Glasses just doesn’t offer yet.
Who the winners will be in these arena is not totally clear just yet, but one thing that’s for certain is that visual augmented reality is something that promises to completely transform the world, so long as the devices and the technology can be integrated with the human body in a way that is unobtrusive and tolerable.
Is Innovega on the right track with the use of contact lenses? Possibly, but only time will tell.
The Mind-Machine Connection
When I first heard about the mind-control game called Mindflex, I was initially disgusted. I’ve spent years writing about the pseudoscience behind all sorts of psychic claims, and here is a game being marketed to children as a “mind control” device. My first reaction was to try and debunk the device.
Wasn’t I surprised to learn that Mattel was one of the first companies clever enough to integrate of EEG-style brain-wave reading technology into a game. In 2010, three neuroscientists tested the device to confirm it really works, and posted the video to YouTube.
The game really only detects the level of your brain waves which reflects your mental focus. The sharper your mental focus, the faster a fan turns, which in turn elevates a foam ball. It isn’t quite mind control, but it’s about as close as modern technology can get.
This may seem like it’s just a game to improve your brain fitness, but is this actually a sign of more amazing devices to come? I think so, yes. In fact, a clue that this is happening came at the end of 2013 when University of Washington researchers sent one person’s brain signal over the Internet, and used that signal to control the gross motor actions of a second person’s hand at the other end of the UW campus.
The second scientist wore a specially designed cap with a transcranial magnetic stimulation coil placed directly over the part of his motor cortex responsible for hand movement. The brain wave “trigger” worked, and the second scientist’s hand moved in what he described later as a “nervous tic”.
The experiment highlights what the Mattel brain game had already proved – that brain waves can be measured and used to manipulate the world, without anything more than the power of your mind. The only question that remains now is how this new use of EEG technology will further integrate humans with the computers that we love so much.
Do you think the pace of human-machine interfacing will pick up in coming years? Can you think of any creative ideas for these technologies? Share your own thoughts and ideas in the comments section below!
In a rare move that highlights the severity of the security hole in one of the Web's most popular browsers, the US Computer Emergency Readiness Team and its British counterpart tell people to stop using Internet Explorer until Microsoft can fix it.
It's not often that the US or UK governments weigh in on the browser wars, but a new Internet Explorer vulnerability that affects all major versions of the browser from the past decade has forced it to raise an alarm: Stop using IE.
The zero-day exploit, the term given to a previously unknown, unpatched flaw, allows attackers to install malware on your computer without your permission. That malware could be used to steal personal data, track online behavior, or gain control of the computer. Security firm FireEye, which discovered the bug, said that the flaw is being used with a known Flash-based exploit technique to attack financial and defense organizations in the US via Internet Explorer 9, 10, and 11. Those versions of the browser run on Microsoft's Windows Vista, Windows 7, andWindows 8, although the exploit is present in Internet Explorer 6 and above.
While the Computer Emergency Readiness Team in England and the US regularly issue browser advisories, this is one of the few times that the CERT team has recommended that people avoid using a specific browser.
FireEye recommends that if you can't switch browsers, then you disable Internet Explorer's Flash plug-in. You also can use IE with Microsoft's Enhanced Mitigation Experience Toolkit security app, but that will not be as secure as simply switching browsers.
Microsoft and the Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Statistics vary as to how many people actually use Internet Explorer.NetMarketShare puts the total around 55 percent of the desktop browser market, while competitor StatCounter says that 22.58 percent of people use IE. While the disparity is large, in either case the flaw affects a huge number of browsers being actively used.
Updated, 4:13 p.m. PT:to add UK CERT position on Internet Explorer.
from arstechnica.com by Peter Bright - Apr 25 2014, 1:02pm PDT
As announced earlier this week, Microsoft's purchase of Nokia's Devices and Services division has closed almost four months later than expected.
Redmond is paying about $5 billion for the Nokia division, now named Microsoft Mobile Oy, and some 8,500 design patents. The software giant is also paying another $2 billion for a ten-year license for 30,000 utility patents, with an option to renew the licenses in perpetuity.
Nokia is, however, keeping hold of two factories. Nokia will operate its 7,500-person factory in Chennai, India, on Microsoft's behalf. The Finnish firm is involved in a tax dispute with the Indian government centered around the plant, and Indian authorities have blocked its transfer until the dispute is resolved. Microsoft announced earlier in the week that it would not take ownership of Nokia's South Korean factory.
Even without these factories, Microsoft is still increasing its headcount by some 25,000, for a total of 126,000 employees.
Microsoft is buying the Asha and Lumia brands and will have limited access to the Nokia brand. The company hasn't announced how products will be branded going forward, and it's not clear that the "Microsoft Mobile" name will ever be consumer-facing. Integration of the two companies is expected to take 18 to 24 months. Stephen Elop, former CEO of Nokia, will become executive vice president of Microsoft's Devices Group, which spans not only Microsoft Mobile, but also Xbox, Perceptive Pixel, and Surface.
Nokia, for its part, will continue with three divisions: HERE, which offers mapping and location services; Nokia Solutions and Networks, which builds networking and communications infrastructure; and Advanced Technologies, which develops and licenses technology. Under the terms of the agreement, it's blocked from selling smartphones until 2016.
By Brian Stelter@brianstelterApril 2, 2014: 12:23 PM ET
NEW YORK (CNNMoney)
Amazon wants to be the brain -- and the heart -- inside your big-screen TV.
On Wednesday the company introduced a small black box called Amazon fireTV that enables television sets to access Internet programming, including streaming shows from its Amazon Prime subscription service, and a giant library of video games.
The device will cost $99 and will start shipping immediately.
With it, Amazon will compete head-on both with streaming gadgets like Apple(AAPL,Fortune 500) TV and console makers like Microsoft(MSFT, Fortune 500) and Sony(SNE).
All of these companies, in various ways and for various reasons, want to supplement -- and, over time, possibly replace -- the set top boxes from cable and satellite companies that sit in most living rooms.
Amazon's fireTV has a couple unique features, including a remote control with a voice recognition search feature, so a user can speak the name a show, actor or topic and find that content.
Perhaps most importantly, the device doubles as a casual gaming console; the company says it will have a library of thousands of games available to users, some free and others that exist as paid apps. Amazon announced a gaming controller that will sell for $39.99.
The device may help advance Amazon's streaming TV ambitions. The company has started to introduce original shows, like "Alpha House" and "Betas," and has spent handsome sums of money to secure exclusive rights to other shows, like past seasons of Fox's "24." But its streaming service is a fraction of the size of Netflix(NFLX).
At a press event in Manhattan, Amazon differentiated fireTV by reading snippets of negative user reviews of other streaming media gadgets from Amazon.com. The complaints called out competitors like Google(GOOG, Fortune 500), Microsoft, Apple, Samsung and Vizio by name.
The company said it identified three big issues that make streaming devices "too frustrating:" inadequate search tools, sluggish performance and closed ecosystems of apps.
Peter Larsen, an Amazon vice president, said fireTV specifically addressed gripes with dongles like Google Chromecast and boxes like Apple TV.
He called the new device "tiny" and "incredibly powerful."
One feature, called ASAP, predicts what TV episodes a user might watch next, and "queues them up so that they start instantly," Larsen said.
To underscore the point that fireTV doesn't just exist to support its Amazon Prime service, the demonstration showed off non-Amazon programs like NBC's "Chicago Fire."
Bezos' approach to tablets, newspapers
"It's the easiest place to watch Netflix," Larsen said pointedly.
But the event also included a highlight reel for Amazon Studios' original shows, including a second season of "Alpha House," which is in production now.
"Customers are loving these shows," Larsen said.
Amazon also highlighted fireTV's easy access to its children's programming interface, called FreeTime, and music and photos.
