'Tech addicts' asked to give up gadgets for 24 hours for charity

London, Mar 26 (ANI): A charity has posed a challenge to technology addicts to go without their beloved gadgets for 24 hours.

Charity Practical Action has laid down the challenge to raise awareness of the technology-poor developing world.

They are asking for techno addicts to switch off their phone, unplug their games console and shut down their laptop for one day on March 27.

And if people are able to do it, the charity wants them to report their experiences in blogs, videos, photo diaries or cartoon strips but not until March 28.om Wiggins, news editor of Stuff Magazine, found his bash at the blackout "liberating" but admitted it was tough.

"Asking a tech journo to go without gadgets for a day is like getting a hairdresser to give up scissors," Sky News quoted him as saying.

Writer and broadcaster Adam Hart-Davis described a "wonderful" day mucking out chickens and planting trees.

"I also read the newspaper, which I decided was intermediate rather than high-tech," he said.

Describing the day's serious side, David Grimshaw from Practical Action said: "No Tech Day will help people reflect on the role of technology in their lives, not just today but tomorrow.

"In Nepal or Zimbabwe tomorrow...people will not have a choice about the technologies they use.

"They will not have internet access, mobile phones, electricity and clean water unless we address the multi-faceted problems of poverty," he added.

Practical Action provides developing countries with simple technology in a bid to improve their lives. (ANI)

Typing tracker could spot paedophiles

London, March 26 (ANI): Paedophiles trying to lure children through the web may be tracked down in future by the way they type on a keyboard.

Professor Roy Maxion from the Newcastle University has developed a technique to identify typists' age, sex and culture in just ten keystrokes.

Former Northumbria Police Detective chief inspector Phil Butler, who is the head of the universities CyberCrime and Computer Security department, explained how the system functions.

"Professor Maxion takes 50 people at a time and hooks their fingers up to electronic sensors, then videos, monitors and records their typing patterns, speeds and rhythms with a very accurate clock," the Sun quoted him as saying.

He added: "He can now identify anyone using a keyboard within a 95 per cent accuracy within ten keystrokes.

"As soon as you type ten numbers or letters he can work out your sex, your culture, your age and whether you have any hand injuries.

"In general women's typing tends to flow more and is a little quicker. You'd expect men's typing to be a little more heavy-handed and apparently that's the case.

"We're looking at the application of the research, particularly in relation to internet grooming. If children are talking to each other on Windows Live or MSN messenger, Microsoft might be able to see if there's an adult on there."

The CyberCrime and Computer Security department, which was formed last summer, believes the new technology could also be used to prevent fraud at devices such as cash machines. (ANI)

'Skinput' can turn your arm into a touchscreen!

Washington, Mar 27(ANI): Annoyed with the tiny touchscreens on today's mobile devices? Well, your forearm can now solve that problem by becoming a part of a skin-based interface that effectively turns your body into a touchscreen, say scientists.

An international team has come up with a system, called Skinput, which has the ability to detect the ultralow-frequency sound produced by tapping the skin with a finger, and the microchip-sized "pico" projectors now found in some cellphones, reports New Scientist.

According to the scientists, the system beams a keyboard or menu onto the user's forearm and hand from a projector housed in an armband. An acoustic detector, also in the armband, then calculates which part of the display is to be activated.

Chris Harrison at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, working with Dan Morris and Desney Tan at Microsoft's research lab in Redmond, Washington, exploits the way our skin, musculature and skeleton combine to make distinctive sounds when we tap on different parts of the arm, palm, fingers and thumb.

They have identified various locations on the forearm and hand that produce characteristic acoustic patterns when tapped.

The acoustic detector in the armband contains five piezoelectric cantilevers, each weighted to respond to certain bands of sound frequencies.

Different combinations of the sensors are activated to differing degrees depending on where the arm is tapped.

Twenty volunteers tested the system and most found it easy to navigate through icons on the forearm and tap fingers to actuate commands.

The system could use wireless technology like Bluetooth to transmit commands to many types of device - including phones, iPods and even PCs.

The researchers will present their work in April at the Computer-Human Interaction meeting in Atlanta, Georgia. (ANI)

Hacker-proof Internet

Experts have come up with a new security system for Internet using a special laser that may help keep hackers' prying eyes off for good.

Scientists at Tel Aviv University have developed a digital security tool with existing fiber optic and computer technology that transmits binary lock-and-key information in the form of light pulses.

The device, invented by Dr. Jacob Scheuer, TAU's School of Electrical Engineering, allegedly ensures that a shared key code can be unlocked by the sender and receiver, and absolutely nobody else.

Dr. Scheuer explained: "Rather than developing the lock or the key, we''ve developed a system which acts as a type of key bearer."

The researchers continued: "The trick is for those at either end of the fiber optic link to send different laser signals they can distinguish between, but which look identical to an eavesdropper."

Dr. Scheuer added: "We''ve already published the theoretical idea and now have developed a preliminary demonstration in my lab. Once both parties have the key they need, they could send information without any chance of detection. We were able to demonstrate that, if it''s done right, the system could be absolutely secure. Even with a quantum computer of the future, a hacker couldn''t decipher the key."

The findings were due to be presented at the next laser and electro-optics conference at the Conference for Lasers and Electro-Optics (CLEO) in San Jose, California.

PC maker Hewlett Packard (HP) unveiled a new line of notebook computers, including netbooks, starting around Rs 16,000.

PC maker Hewlett Packard (HP) on Thursday unveiled a new line of notebook computers, including netbooks, starting around Rs 16,000.

"The new line of notebooks have been designed keeping in mind performance and styling needs of today's youth," HP India President (Personal Systems Group) Sunil Dutt told reporters here.

It also announced that it will offer 100 GB free space with the HP Mini for two months through cloud computing.

"Cloud computing is an area we are really looking forward to. Though the 100 GB free space is for two months, consumers would continue to get 2 GB free space after the two months or they can opt for a paid model," HP Director (Mobility Business Unit - PSG) Rajiev Grover said.

"We are also very interested in forging partnerships with local firms in India," he added.

Asked about losing marketshare in the notebook category, Dutt said, "I don't think it would be fair to make comments on the market based on the performance of just a quarter."

HP, which was for long the leader in the Indian PC market, was dislodged by Dell to the No. 2 spot in the notebook segment in the fourth quarter of calender year 2009.

The new range launched today includes Compaq Presario CQ42 and CQ62 priced at Rs 25,990 onwards, HP Pavilion dm4 and dm6 at Rs 36,990 onwards, HP Minis at Rs 16,000 onwards and HP TouchSmart tm2 at Rs 64,990.

Soon, spy in the sky to 'follow a car'

An American defence research agency is developing a radar system, which will monitor vehicular movement across a city using a few uncrewed aircraft.

Pentagon's Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is creating the experimental vehicle tracking system, called Multipath Exploitation Radar (MER), reports New Scientist.

With the use of the new radar system, DARPA is hoping to track vehicles across an entire city using just a few uncrewed aircraft as it could see around corners and down into "urban canyons".

Unlike traditional radar that relies on direct line of sight and fails to track a vehicle that keeps nipping behind buildings, the MER, by using buildings as mirrors, will identify a target vehicle from radar reflections.

The agency has been exploring how MER might work by driving vehicles around a simulated urban area and collecting returns from an overhead radar. Its researchers are aiming to combine the radar data with a three-dimensional map of the test environment to calculate how the radar reflects off and between vehicles and buildings. This process should highlight which signals in the returning radar data can be used to plot the target vehicle's path.

A DARPA spokesman said that MER is expected to be compatible with the radar systems currently used to track vehicles.

The team anticipates that using reflected radar would cover more ground than a line-of-sight system, making it possible to monitor a city of about 1000 square kilometres, such as Baghdad, with just three airborne radars.

The three-dimensional model of a city needed to make sense of the reflection pattern could be created using LIDAR, the optical surveying technology which is routinely carried on aircraft.

MER makes use of Ku-band radar - frequencies of between 12 and 18 gigahertz. It is sensitive enough to produce distinct signatures for apparently similar vehicles, by detecting slight differences, such as the angle of an aerial or a wing mirror.

The agency is also planning to develop an algorithm, which would enable the system to track multiple vehicles.

A 'Sudoku grid' to foil web fraud

It looks like a crossword grid or a Sudoku puzzle printed on a transparent sheet of plastic. It can also pass off as a fancy Tambola card. But it is neither.

Actually, it is a new tool designed to prevent theft of transaction passwords by fraudsters and make online banking safer.

The grid helps customers generate a new passwod for every online banking transaction.

The novel technology, called 'intellect privacy dynamic grid', works like a physical key that lets you unlock your banking account in the virtual world, every time with a new key.

Brainchild of K. Balaraju, a postgraduate entrepreneurship student at the Indian Institute of Technology Madras (IITM), the idea has been commercialised by a Chennai firm, Laser Soft Infosystems, a subsidiary of Polaris Software Lab. The IITM has filed four patents on the technology.

Within a fortnight of its release, the technology has evoked interest in banking circles in several countries. IndusInd Bank has become its first user in India.

A dynamic grid is a matrix of numeric characters printed on a transparent card with cells randomly assigned to numbers and black colour, while some are left blank. Each grid generated is unique and a bunch of these cards is issued to a customer at the time of registration.

When a user logs into his online account with his access ID and password, another grid of the same size appears on the screen.

All that the user has to do is place the plastic grid exactly aligning it with the grid seen on the screen.

When superimposed, the two grids mutually mask most of the numbers and only a subset of numeric characters from the grid will be visible on the screen. The numbers left on the screen - from left to right or top to bottom - will form the one-time password.

"The numbers generated from the combination of screen grid and transparent card grid vary each time the user logs in. This means that for each transaction, a new grid will be generated by the server so that a unique password props up every time," explained B. Suresh Kamath, Laser Soft Infosystems managing director, who too is an IITM alumni.

The technology works on the principle of "Challenge Response Authentication" which is a method for proving one's identity over an insecure medium without giving out any information.

This is designed to tackle the growing menace of phishing attacks on banking accounts, in which cheats trick you into giving your online passwords through deceptive e- mails and malicious software that can supply all keystroke information to hackers.

"The security strength of the new system lies in the randomness of position and the random text in that position," said Kamath.

"The system is easy to use, cost effective - one card may cost less than a rupee - and ideal for mass banking applications in India.

The technology can be used for transactions through mobiles and ATM screens too. And instead of numbers, we can have letters from any Indian language." Options such as virtual keyboard and e-valets have been found prone to frauds, officials said.