News: How Healthy Are Cellphones?

By | November 24, 2011
 Good article on the health effects of using cellphones. The Sun Sentinel says the U.S. is preparing to launch an investigation into the matter, and quotes Gary Brown, an adjunct professor in technologies at Nova Southeastern University, as saying people don’t realize the issue of cell phone safety has not been settled.
“The industry says there’s no problem and the public remains ignorant. Adults can do what they want, but where the issue becomes critical, is with children,” Brown said.

News: Shredded Stasi Documents To Be Pieced Back Together

By | November 24, 2011
 The kind of story I love: technology used to bring the oppressor to book. The Register reports that documents of the East German State Security Service (Stasi), torn into shreds and stored in 16,000 brown sacks, may soon be pieced together by a software program developed by the Fraunhofer Institute.
 
On Monday, the Institute said it would take five years to solve the world’s biggest jigsaw puzzle electronically. If done by hand, the operation would take several hundred years.
 

Update: Nokia Batteries Safe Shock

By | November 24, 2011
 Nokia, hit by a recent spate of reports, from Vietnam to the Netherlands, of its batteries overheating and catching fire or exploding, says a follow-up test by a Belgian consumer watchdog had shown its own-made batteries were safe for use, Reuters reports.
 
Nokia said in a statement a new test by Test-Aankoop, conducted on November 17, showed all Nokia-made batteries were protected against short-circuiting, believed to be the cause of the problems. The Belgian firm said in a separate statement its previous test released earlier this month had accidentally included counterfeit batteries in the sample. But it said Nokia should address the issue of many forged batteries sold under Nokia’s brand.

News: Security Dangers of Bluetooth

By | November 24, 2011
 A potential loophole in security for Bluetooth phones, which could see strangers hacking into your address books, has been uncovered. BBC reports that researchers have managed to steal information including address books and images from handsets by exploiting shortcomings in Bluetooth security.
 
Adam Laurie of security firm AL Digital has created programs that run on a laptop which scan for Bluetooth handsets and exploit two vulnerabilities to suck down data from phones. This vulnerability has been found on the SonyEricsson T68i and T610 phones and the Nokia 6310 and 7650 handsets. He calls it bluestumbling.

News: Microsoft Takes Aim At Junk, Document Search

By | November 24, 2011
 Microsoft’s Bill Gates has announced new junk e-mail filtering technology called SmartScreen. AP reports the technology will use algorithms to judge whether incoming e-mail messages qualify as junk e-mail and filter them out before they get to the end user’s e-mailbox.
 
More interesting, Gates demonstrated Microsoft Research’s Stuff I’ve Seen project, which is developing a tool for rapidly finding material that users have seen ? whether it was an e-mail, Web site or document. The tool is not to be incorporated in any products anytime soon, but shows people some of where Microsoft’s billions of dollars in research is going.