Europe tiptoes into 3G mobile era

London - March 3 - At several stores in Britain and Italy, shoppers can make video phone calls, watch their favourite soccer stars in action or pick out the route to the nearest pub - all on a gadget with a screen the size of a business card. What they cannot do yet is take the phones home. Though 3, a brand-new phone company controlled by Hutchison Whampoa of Hong Kong, chose the symbolic date of March 3 - 03-03-03, and the birthday of Alexander Graham Bell - to introduce the first commercial third-generation wireless service in Europe, there was no inaugural video phone call on Monday. Instead, 3 is taking only "pre-orders" for now. Phones will be delivered before the end of this month, and the third-generation service should be available when they arrive. Analysts say, Hutchison finds itself in the position of a party host who wants a lot of people to turn up but worries that the drinks will run out if they do. Hutchison Whampoa insists that after a series of postponements -it intended to start 3G last year - most of the kinks have been ironed out. The key question is whether consumers will care. "Hutchison has a lot of guts," said Christophe Cauvy at Thinking Box, a technology consulting firm in London. Three models are available, two from NEC and one from Motorola, priced at Pounds 400-450 (approx. Rupees 30,000/- to Rupees 34000/-). Only one of the models, from NEC, was being demonstrated in the stores. This "handover," however, has been the biggest source of technological headaches to the builders of 3G networks, as calls are sometimes dropped as users leave a 3G area. 

The Asian Age - March 4, 2003.

How To Get Back Stolen Laptops

(CHRIS TAYLOR)

Laptop, now fitted with irreplaceable data, are safer than before even though 591,000 laptops were reported stolen in the US in 2001, - up 53% from the previous year. Luckily, there are now precautions one can take, from better locks to laptop insurance. And if the unthinkable happens, there are even ways to track your lost laptop on the Internet.

If appropriate tracking software is installed, the thief will probably try to go online. As soon as he does, hidden software will broadcast his IP address, which the police can use to locate him in minutes. I tried Stealth signal (stealthsignal.com), a service that costs $45 a year and works with both Macs and PCs. There is also Ztrace (ZTrace.com; $49 a year) for the PC only; Mac OS X users can try LapCop (homepage.mac.com/sweetcocoa/lapcop.html) for $15. Once Stealth Signal was installed on my laptop, I reported it "stolen." Early the next morning I was astonished to receive an e-mail from Stealth Signal, which had tracked the laptop to my home address and phone, even though my number is blocked. The company says it has 63% recovery rate, a figure that climbs to 95% if the laptop broadcasts a signal. One flaw: reformatting the hard drive can also erase the tracking software. 

If you're a frequent flyer, consider the TrackIT, a$59.99 keychain alarm that sounds if you and your machine are separated by more than 12m. Try the Notebook Guardian from PC Guardian ($59.99) 

Questions? Comments? Write to Chris at cdt@well.com

TIME - March 10, 2003.

Face Recognition Puzzle Solved

Haifa - March 10 - For a fleeting moment, Mohamed Atta appeared on an airport security camera minutes before he boarded one of the planes which crashed into the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. Was there any way the camera or its operator would have been able to identify Atta as a suspect before he hijacked and flew the first of the two planes into the twin towers? Israelis Michael and Alex Bronstein think they have the answer: The computer whiz-kids - 22-year-old identical twins almost to tell apart - have applied a new technology to recognizing faces in a way that may yet revolutionize international security.

The technology scans and maps the human face as a three-dimensional surface, providing a far more accurate reference for identifying a person than any current systems, most of which rely on two-dimensional images. The twins say they want to turn the technology into a commercial product, with applications ranging from airports and border crossings to security zones and teller machines. The technology records the surface of a person's face by scanning it with a series of light patterns and stores the data as a three-dimensional image in a computer.

Facial signatures could also be embedded in credit cards or entry permits. People withdrawing money from an automated teller machine or seeking access to a secure compound could have their identity verified by an on-site camera. A key strength of the technology is that it works with faces in poor lighting and at any angle.

Hindustan Times - March 11, 2003

Officer Safety - Fold Up Gun

Received From INTERPOL/USNCB-Washington, State and Local Liaison
This website has a little more info about the weapon.
http://www.theamedcitizen.com/gunpages/naa22.htm

Provided by the US Attorney's Office Omaha FYI, we had a party register this hand gun yesterday at the front desk. When the gun is folded up, it can be placed into a pocket giving the appearance of a pocket knife and nearly undetectable. The case is made of plastic and acts as the handle when unfolded. The particular weapon shoots a 22 LR cartridge. The manufacturer is North American Arms. The owner stated he purchased this weapon from a gun dealer in Fremont, NE.


Security Revealing New Rays

Searching for nuclear weapons, particularly "dirty bombs," has never been a simple task. Scientists at the Los Alamos National Laboratory may have found a more efficient way of finding nukes - using something called muon radiography. Muons can detect carefully concealed plutonium or unanium-based objects, the Los Alamos team announced in Nature last week. Muons even have better eye-sight than Superman, passing through lead with ease. The Los Alamos scientists insist the potential pros far outweigh the cons. Muon radiography will soon be "one more arrow in the quiver for inspecting packages and the like," says Los Alamos's William Priedhorsky.

Newsweek - March 31, 2003

Food for Thought

Be such a man, and live such a life, that if every man were such as you, and every life like yours, this earth would be a God's Paradise.

Phillips Brooks
(1835-1893, Poet)

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"We judge ourselves by what we feel capable of doing, while others judge us by what we have already done."

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