Techno-News Blog

By JORDAN ROBERTSON – Associated Press

A Harvard University professor has been awarded a top technology prize for research that has paved the way for computers that more closely mimic how humans think, including the one that won a “Jeopardy!” tournament. Leslie Valiant, who teaches computer science and applied mathematics at Harvard’s School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, was awarded the A.M. Turing Award for 2010, the Association for Computing Machinery said last week. The $250,000 award is considered the Nobel Prize of computing and is named after the famous British mathematician Alan M. Turing.

http://www.onlineathens.com/stories/031311/bus_798754662.shtml

By CATHY KOPLEN, News Chief Correspondent

As access to the World Wide Web has exploded to communities around the globe, people are exploring new ways to connect. Many diverse businesses, industries, city governments, schools and news providers maintain a Web presence where information can be obtained instantly without human contact. This dissemination of information allows the searcher to find answers at any time of the day or night, from anywhere in the world without the inconvenience of wading through a telephone prompt or a visit to a facility.

http://www.newschief.com/article/20110313/NEWS/103135111/1009/living?Title=East-Polk-businesses-hone-in-on-technology

By VIRGINIA SHANK, Tribune Chronicle

Lea Dotson couldn’t understand why her daughter wasn’t bringing any textbooks home from school. She became increasingly concerned early in the school year as days, even weeks, passed and the fourth-grader at Warren City Schools McGuffey K-8 building still had no books. Dotson asked the teacher about it. She then asked members of the Warren City Schools Board of Education. Months later she says she still is waiting for answers. “I always had textbooks. I don’t understand why my child doesn’t have them, and it really bothers me,” she said. ”I believe every child should have his or her own textbooks in every subject. They need books to do homework, to study. It should be a priority.”

http://www.tribtoday.com/page/content.detail/id/554392/Bye-the-books-.html?nav=5021

By Emily Hill, Little Elm Journal Star

Some rolled fast, while others slid sticky down the ramp. No, this isn’t a 5-year-old’s Hot Wheels Track, but the 13th annual Edible Car Contest. Area middle and high school students brought their edible car creations on March 5 to Texas Woman’s University to compete against each other for the best-looking, fastest and most aerodynamic cars. Out of 81 teams participating, two teams from the Little Elm Education Center snagged awards at the event. A team from The Colony also participated. The university has sponsored the contest every year.

http://www.courier-gazette.com/articles/2011/03/11/little_elm_journal/news/179.txt

by Exchange Magazine

Salman Khan talks about how and why he created the remarkable Khan Academy, a carefully structured series of educational videos offering complete curricula in math and, now, other subjects. He shows the power of interactive exercises, and calls for teachers to consider flipping the traditional classroom script — give students video lectures to watch at home, and do “homework” in the classroom with the teacher available to help. In 2004, Salman Khan, a hedge fund analyst, began posting math tutorials on YouTube. Six years later, he has posted more than 2.000 tutorials, which are viewed nearly 100,000 times around the world each day.

http://www.exchangemagazine.com/morningpost/2011/week10/Friday/031104.htm

By Tom De Martini, South Whitehall Patch

As cyber-related crimes increase in this technology-savvy generation, Berks-Lehigh Regional Police talked to the Jaindl Elementary School’s Parent Teacher Organization earlier this week on ways to keep children from getting into serious trouble on the Internet.

http://southwhitehall.patch.com/articles/internet-woes-cops-coach-parents-on-protecting-their-kids

By Tom Simonite, Technology Review

A new search tool developed by researchers at Microsoft indexes medical images of the human body, rather than the Web. On CT scans, it automatically finds organs and other structures, to help doctors navigate in and work with 3-D medical imagery. CT scans use X-rays to capture many slices through the body that can be combined to create a 3-D representation.

http://technologyreview.com/computing/35076/?p1=MstRcnt

By Katherine Bourzac, Technology Review

A new type of nonvolatile memory based on carbon nanotubes has dramatically lower power requirements than current technology. It uses the nanotubes to read and write data to small islands of phase-change materials, which store information. With further development, the new technology could extend battery life in mobile devices and also make desktop computers more efficient. Nonvolatile memory stores information even when the power is switched off.

http://technologyreview.com/computing/35083/?p1=MstRcnt

By Erica Naone, Technology Review

Researchers who have spent the last two years studying the security of car computer systems have revealed that they can take control of vehicles wirelessly. The researchers were able to control everything from the car’s brakes to its door locks to its computerized dashboard displays by accessing the onboard computer through GM’s OnStar and Ford’s Sync, as well as through the Bluetooth connections intended for making hands-free phone calls. They presented their findings this week to the National Academies Committee on Electronic Vehicle Controls and Unintended Acceleration, which was brought together partly in response to last year’s scandal over supposed problems with the computerized braking systems in Toyota Priuses.

http://technologyreview.com/computing/35094/?p1=MstRcnt&a=f

by Christopher Mims, Technology Review

When the stakes are high enough, hackers have figured out how to defeat all manner of computers not even connected to the internet: ATM machines, credit card readers on gas pumps; you name it. How long then, in a society in which elections are already bought and sold through political action committees and K-Street lobbying, before the monetary incentive to steal votes from the latest generation of voting machines exceeds the difficulty of pulling it off? That, indirectly, is the question asked and answered in a just-released judge’s summary (pdf) of testimony from a trial conducted in 2008-2009 in which the state of New Jersey was sued for insufficiently guaranteeing the physical security of its electronic voting machines.

http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/mimssbits/26496/?p1=A7

by Christopher Mims, Technology Review

Peter Rojas of Gizmodo, Engadget and GDGT broke the news that Sony might be working on a point and shoot camera with a 3G radio inside it. The announcement didn’t exactly make waves — a number of outlets dutifully reported it, but on the scale of random press release to spycam photos of the next iPad, it rated somewhere on the low end.

http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/mimssbits/26508/?p1=A6

By Veronique Greenwood, Technology Review

Scientists have created exquisitely detailed maps of parts of the mouse brain by combining anatomical information with knowledge of what the different nerve cells do. By infusing cells with fluorescent dye, teams at Harvard Medical School and the Max Plank Institute for Medical Research pinpointed neurons in the mouse visual cortex and retina that responded to specific stimuli, like a beam of light moving in different directions. They then sliced the tissue and used electron microscopy, which can image some of the tiniest structures in cells, to map the connections between the neurons. Armed with knowledge of both how the cells connect and what they do, the teams gained insights into how the brain works.

http://www.technologyreview.com/biomedicine/36956/?p1=A4&a=f

By: Nicholas Kolakowski, eWeek

Microsoft is claiming responsibility for the takedown of the massive Rustock botnet, which stopped sending out spam midmorning March 16. Estimates of Rustock’s size varied between 1.1 million and 1.7 million infected computers, and the botnet may have been responsible for 47.5 percent of all spam sent worldwide by the end of 2010. Rustock also went inactive for days at a time, making it unclear at first whether the current silence was due to internal factors or the efforts of some outside agency.

http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Windows/Microsoft-Claims-Rustock-Botnet-Takedown-825397/?kc=rss

By: Fahmida Y. Rashid, eWeek

Following RSA’s announcement of a data breach, there’s really nothing for SecurID customers to do but to monitor their systems in hopes of foiling an attack, if it ever comes. RSA Security, a division of storage giant EMC, announced late March 17 it had been breached by attackers and that some information about its SecurID two-factor authentication technology has been stolen. The company declined to specify what was stolen, nor did it provide any information on how the data breach occurred.

http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Security/RSA-SecuID-Customers-Need-to-Boost-Vigilance-Other-Network-Defenses-224876/?kc=rss

By: Fahmida Y. Rashid, eWeek

The network of one the world’s largest and trusted security firms has been breached, and an unknown amount of information about its popular multifactor authentication technology has been stolen. Customers are worried about what form potential attacks could take. The SecurID information that was stolen would not allow attackers to launch a successful direct attack on existing SecureID customers, Art Coviello, executive chairman of RSA Security, wrote in an open letter to customers posted on the company’s Website March 17. However, the company acknowledged the information could be potentially used to “reduce the effectiveness” of an existing SecurID deployment as part of a broader attack.

http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Security/RSA-SecurID-Theft-Spawns-Potential-Attack-Scenarios-422464/?kc=rss

By: Clint Boulton, eWeek

Motorola Mobility will begin selling its WiFi-only Motorola Xoom tablet March 27 for $599 at Best Buy, Costco, RadioShack, Sam’s Club, Staples and Walmart, and online at Amazon.com. The 32GB Xoom WiFi, which is price-equivalent to Apple’s new WiFi-only, 32GB iPad 2, will also be available to commercial IT channels and regional retailers through a distribution agreement with Synnex Corporation, and regional carriers through Brightpoint, Motorola said.

http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Desktops-and-Notebooks/Motorola-Xoom-WiFi-Coming-March-27-for-599-229417/?kc=rss

By: Nicholas Kolakowski, eWeek

Apple’s weight-loss regimen for the iPad 2 included redesigning the battery structure, adopting some new technologies, and eliminating one key part. That’s according to a March 16 report from analysis firm IHS iSuppli, which conducted one of its high-profile teardowns of the next-generation tablet. According to that report, the slimming-down of the iPad 2’s battery assembly was a key reason for the tablet’s newfound slimness.

http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Desktops-and-Notebooks/Apple-iPad-2s-Thinner-Thanks-to-Design-Tweaks-New-Tech-Report-768361/?kc=rss

by Martin Bryant, the Next Web

There’s been a noticeable increase in the use of QR codes in marketing of late in the west, long after they became a common sight in Japan. However there’s still quite a way to go, it seems, before these little square blocks of data become truly accepted. A survey of 1000 British teenagers has found that 72% of 11-18 year olds don’t have the software to read QR codes or aren’t aware their phone can read them. Additionally, only 43% believed QR codes could be read by a phone, 8% of girls thought they were a magic-eye picture(!) and only 33% knew what they were called.

http://thenextweb.com/media/2011/03/16/many-teenagers-are-clueless-on-qr-codes-can-they-ever-really-take-off/

By Matt Danzico, BBC News

You can almost feel a buzz on the fingertips of attendees shaking hands at the South by Southwest (SXSW) Interactive festival in Austin, Texas – one of the world’s biggest networking opportunities for the web community. A little micro-blogging site called Twitter launched here as a start-up in 2007 – and there are plenty of people attending this year who want to emulate their success.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-12735762

By Jane Wakefield, BBC

Smartphones are getting pretty clever these days but it is unlikely they will outwit the cybercriminals as fraudsters increasingly go mobile. Last week Android Market, the shop front for applications aimed at Android smartphones, was hit by around 60 malicious apps. It is thought that they did little real damage other than to Android’s reputation, but the incident put the issue of mobile security back in the headlines.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-12710763

by the BBC

Smartphones and their apps have been added to the typical basket of goods used to calculate inflation. Dating agency fees have also been included for the first time to reflect the rising use of these websites, the Office for National Statistics said. The ONS updates its 650-strong basket of goods and services annually, to better reflect public spending habits.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-12744400