News: Don’t Laugh, Your Email’s Coming

By | November 24, 2011
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 Not sure whether to laugh or cry at this one. Or tiptoe quietly away. Researchers at Australia’s Monash University, the New Scientist reports, are working on software that would that automatically log you onto the nearest computer by listening out for your voice, or laugh, or footsteps. Microphones on each computer, Rachel Nowak writes, would pick up a person’s voice, or listen for familiar footsteps coming or going. The software would then recognise them and calculate where they are, using flocks of ‘intelligent agents’ – pieces of computer code that move from computer to computer. “The agents,” she writes, “close in on those computers where the person’s voice is loudest, until they pinpoint the nearest one.”
 
The agents — or sneaky little tattletales, depending on your point of view — would, upon realising that you were heading towards the Mars Bar dispenser, deliver your email to the nearest computer, or, upon hearing your rich baritone laugh by the water cooler, administer a pithy reprimand and remind you that your expenses are horribly overdue. I’m not sure I’m ready for this kind of life. We already have an accounts department.
 
 

News: How To Be A Pornographer

By | November 24, 2011
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 Further to my earlier posting about the dangers of folk hijacking your PC to send spam, here’s something from Reuters, appearing on Wired News that confirms the worst: Nearly 2,000 PCs with high-speed Internet connections have been hijacked by a stealth program and are being used to send ads for pornography. The stealth program is a Trojan called “Migmaf” for “migrant Mafia”, and Reuters quotes Richard M. Smith, a privacy and security consultant in Boston, as saying most of the PC owners likely have no idea what is happening. Smith said he suspects whoever is responsible for the Migmaf scam may be in Russia, because some e-mail addresses involved in the scheme go back to Russian servers and there are other Russian language references in some related domain names.
 
How to avoid become an unwitting pornographer? Use a firewall like Zone Alarm (there’s a free version, which should be enough for your needs) and keep your virus checker running and up to date.

Software: Calendarscope

By | November 24, 2011
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 Bored with Outlook, Lotus Organizer and the Palm Desktop, I’ve spent the past month or so with Calendarscope, and have to say it’s excellent. It doesn’t stray too far from any of the above, but adds some features — or improves on existing ones — to make it a real treat to use.
 
 
You can synchronize your data with Palm OS handhelds, print out a calendar, save it in HTML to publish it to the Web or on a company intranet. What I like about it most is its colour-coded capabilities, however. You can assign colours to different kinds of appointments and tasks, customize the background, and, generally, make your day look a lot more interesting than it probably is. The program costs $30 but comes in a fully functional trial version. As with a lot of good software these days, it’s from Russia.

News: The Future of Music

By | November 24, 2011
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 An interesting, post-weekend read on the future of music, courtesy of CNET and The University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School. In the end, they say, online music is just going to be too convenient, too cheap and too compelling to be ignored by the majors, and to be worthwhile for the pirates.
 
 
The article reckons that the glory days of the CD are over, even if what eventually replaces it  – a streaming environment where you can access your music on the go, wherever you are — is going to take some time to be sufficiently ubiquitous and conceptually appealing. I’d tend to agree, especially with the article’s closing words, from Lee Black, a senior analyst covering music and media for Jupiter Media, the Internet data firm: “I think you will always have a free (pirating) market,” Black says. “What you have to do is make the legitimate market much easier to use than the free market.”