Elektronx Today

Road warriors need all the help they can get. Atek won’t sell you a comfortable bed, a guaranteed ontime flight, or four more inches of legroom, but it does offer two other valuable commodities for life on the road: portability and security. Atek’s compact keyboard and personal password organizer are both worth a look, according to reviewer Jack Germain.

Creating strong passwords with letters and numbers is vital to keeping secure access to computers and online accounts. Remembering them and easily retrieving them are equally vital. A password is only as good as the user’s ability to remember it.

In today’s world of mobile access and multiple accounts, that can be a very big problem. Until now, the available solutions were risky at best.

For instance, carrying around a list of passwords in a wallet or cubbyhole in a briefcase just invites discovery. Sooner or later, the account holder loses the paper or the bad guy bent on ID theft finds it.

Usually no better is ferreting away passwords into a computer file or smartphone folder. Encrypting the stored file in these mobile devices may deter common thieves, but less so the hacker pro.

Atekhas a high-tech yet simple and cost-effective solution. The Logio Secure Password Organizer provides a credit-card size device that stores different, hard-to-guess passwords simply by memorizing one master passcode to access the encrypted data. Continue reading »

Infections of a worm that spreads through low security networks, memory sticks, and PCs without the latest security updates is “skyrocketing”.

The malicious program, known as Conficker, Downadup, or Kido was first discovered in October 2008.

Anti-virus firm F-Secure estimates there are now 8.9m machines infected.

Experts warn this figure could be far higher and say users should have up-to-date anti-virus software and install Microsoft’s MS08-067 patch.

In its security blog, F-Secure said that the number of infections based on its calculations was “skyrocketing” and that the situation was “getting worse”.

Speaking to the BBC, Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant with anti-virus firm Sophos, said the outbreak was of a scale they had not seen for some time.

“Microsoft did a good job of updating people’s home computers, but the virus continues to infect business who have ignored the patch update.

“A shortage of IT staff during the holiday break didn’t help and rolling out a patch over a large number of computers isn’t easy.

“What’s more, if your users are using weak passwords - 12345, QWERTY, etc - then the virus can crack them in short order,” he added.

“But as the virus can be spread with USB memory sticks, even having the Windows patch won’t keep you safe. You need anti-virus software for that.” Continue reading »

Technical advances jump-start electric cars, wind turbines, and solar power.

Capturing more light: A startup called 1366 Technologies says that it has found a way to significantly increase the efficiency of silicon solar cells. Ordinarily, the flat wires on the surface of solar cells that are used to collect electrical current prevent light from reaching the active material in a cell, reducing efficiency. The company’s new design traps much of the light that would have been reflected. In the picture, some of the red light from a laser is redirected from the wire to areas on the cell where the light can be absorbed. The new approach dramatically helps improve the performance of solar cells without increasing costs.
Credit: 1366 Technologies

When oil prices shot to $145 per barrel this year, supporters of alternative-energy technologies of all kinds cheered. Spirits fell, however, especially at some advanced biofuels companies, after oil prices plummeted to $40, a contingency considered at the beginning of this year in our realistic assessment of biofuels.

Yet the year has seen some remarkable advances in energy technology, and many of the innovators in this area remain hopeful that the coming decade won’t be like the 1980s, when a drop in oil prices snuffed out interest in alternative energy.

A number of improvements to wind turbines could increase the amount of power that they produce and make wind power cheaper. Among the improvements were new blade designs inspired by whales, as well as better generators and a new enclosed design that could double power output.

Electric vehicles and plug-ins also took steps forward with better batteries, as well as with an ambitious plan by a company called Better Place to develop a vehicle-charging and battery-swapping network that will begin in Israel and Denmark. More recently, the same company has announced projects in Australia, California, and Hawaii. One of the cars that could be a part of this system was announced by Renault–indeed, all of the major automakers have confirmed projects for plug-in hybrids or electric cars.

Solar panels continue to improve. Experimental solar concentrators could make solar power as cheap as electricity from coal. Modifications to conventional solar cells could lower prices even sooner. A basic research finding could lead to a cheap way to store solar power–and, for that matter, any other source of electricity. That could be a boon to the power grid and allow renewable sources to supply much more of our electricity. (See David Talbot’s “Lifeline for Renewable Power.”)

Meanwhile, as the United States lurches along without an energy policy, oil-rich sheikhs in the Middle East are pressing forward with the construction of a car-free, zero-emissions city in the desert.

While predictions of a deep recession, as well as continuing low oil prices and credit woes, during the upcoming year remain worrisome, the United States has a new administration that, going by its rhetoric and cabinet appointees, will strongly support alternative energy. And already, technological advances have made renewable-power prices competitive with prices for conventional power in many places worldwide, allowing sources such as wind and solar to thrive even without government support.

Homeowners can knock 20 to 40 percent off their electricity bills with a new wind turbine that can be mounted directly on a building. The ­seven-foot-wide plastic turbine has a ring around its rotors that diffuses noise and limits vibration; the company claims that the turbine is no louder than a whisper. In windy locations, its power output should be about 2,000 kilowatt-hours a year.

The upcoming transition to digital television broadcasts will free up a lot of airspace for new communications technologies. However, the switch will not be without its share of confusion, much of it experienced by consumers unsure of what, if anything, they’ll need to buy in order to keep receiving TV signals. Viewers with old TVs may need to pick up a new converter box, which can be bought at a discount. The day television broadcast signals switch from analog to digital — is less than five months away. While the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and broadcasters like ABC, CBS, NBC and FOX have spent recent months informing the viewing public about the switch, there’s still a lot of confusion about what it all means among viewers with various ways of receiving programming. U.S. viewers watch on everything from ancient, bunny-eared boxes to 60-inch high-def TVs hooked up to 800-channel satellite subscriptions. Who needs to upgrade by next February? How?

Of the 1,745 television stations required to switch to digital signals, some 1,609 already offer digital programming. Cable subscribers and most satellite TV subscribers won’t have to do anything. Neither will people who already use newer digital tuners (as of March of 2007, new TVs have been required to include digital tuners). However, anyone using an older TV with an analog tuner will need to purchase a digital TV converter set-top box. Satellite subscribers who view local TV stations over the air rather than through their satellite providers will also have to go digital if they haven’t done so already. Continue reading »

Google has taken its browser Chrome out of beta status, paving the way for the software to be pre-installed on new computers next year.

The move out of beta – which indicates that software is usable but may have bugs – means that Chrome is considered fully functional and can be considered by OEMs (original equipment manufacturers) such as Hewlett-Packard or Dell as part of the bundle of software included on laptops and other PCs.

Dennis Woodside, UK managing director of Google, told the Financial Times earlier this year that Chrome would “definitely” come pre-installed with a major OEM in early 2009, but would not be drawn on the manufacturer.

Dell, the world’s second-largest PC maker has said it is in talks with Google about pre-installed components. The deal with Dell to supply the Google toolbar, a pre-installed search function in rival browser Internet Explorer, expires in January.

The Chrome announcement was preceded by Marissa Mayer, Google’s vice-president, hinting week at a conference in Paris that the browser would be declared fully functional soon.

The move out of beta is swift for a Google product. Googlemail, the company’s e-mail service, is still labelled beta despite being launched in 2004 and having millions of users.

The significance of browsers is increasing as more and more software applications are delivered via the web, and the success of those applications depends on how well browsers can handle the programming code. For instance, Google Docs, a free rival to Microsoft’s Office, runs directly in the browser, and requires javascript to work. Continue reading »

Touch tricks for small and large displays could be the next big thing.

Earlier this week, the humble computer mouse celebrated its 40th birthday. While surprisingly little has changed since Doug Engelbart, an engineer at Stanford Research Institute, in Palo Alto, CA, first demonstrated the mouse to a skeptical crowd in San Francisco, we may have already seen a few glimpses of the future of computer interfaces. If so, over the next few years, the future of the computer interface will likely revolve around touch.

Thanks to the popularity of the iPhone, the touch screen has gained recognition as a practical interface for computers. In the coming years, we may see increasingly useful variations on the same theme. A couple of projects, in particular, point the way toward interacting more easily with miniature touch screens, as well as with displays the size of walls.

One problem with devices like the iPhone is that users’ fingers tend to cover up important information on the screen. Yet making touch screens much larger would make a device too bulky to slip discreetly into a pocket.

A project called nanoTouch, developed at Microsoft Research, tackles the challenges of adding touch sensitivity to ever-shrinking displays. Patrick Baudisch and his colleagues have added touch interaction to the back of devices that range in size from an iPod nano to a watch or a pendant. The researchers’ concept is for a gadget to have a front that is entirely a display, a back that is entirely touch sensitive, and a side that features buttons.

To make the back of a gadget touch sensitive, the researchers added a capacitive surface, similar to those used on laptop touch pads. In one demonstration, the team shows that the interface can be used to play a first-person video game on a screen the size of a credit card. In another demo, the device produces a semitransparent image of a finger as if the device were completely see-through. Continue reading »

A partnership between Boston-Power and HP will equip notebooks with a line of batteries that use no heavy metals and last as long as three years. The Sonata batteries are able to withstand 1,000 charges, while normal batteries last for about 200.

Lithium-ion battery maker Boston-Power and partner HP (NYSE: HPQ) announced Wednesday the upcoming availability of Boston-Power’s next-generation Sonata battery cell. The environmentally friendly and longer-lasting battery will be available as an upgrade option beginning in early 2009.

The first product released by Boston-Power, the Sonata provides “like-new” performance for three years. To back up that claim, the Sonata batteries will come with a three-year warranty — the longest available from any notebook manufacturer, the company said.

“This is the first invention the team worked on and basically it is able to charge and recharge 1,000 times compared to 150 to 250 times for traditional batteries, under normal conditions,” Christina Lampe-Onnerud, founder and chief executive officer of Boston-Power, told TechNewsWorld.

Just Keeps Going

It is the Sonata’s revolutionary design that enables the battery to offer users a lifespan up to 10 times longer than traditional lithium-ion batteries.

“It’s basically the chemistry. I invite you from now on to think of a battery as a chemical factory where you have a lot of different chemicals that need to react. It is also a pretty major innovation around the mechanical design and the mechanical features of the cell. We have been very, very active on the application side, trying to understand how current and voltages are fed into the cells,” Lampe-Onnerud explained.

Depending on the laptop model and how it is being used, the batteries should offer up to 2 hours and 45 minutes of battery power, she added. Continue reading »

Wireless payments sure are snappy. You can buy gas with the wave of a wand and buzz through a toll booth without opening a window. But this fast-and-easy way to transfer customer data can pose a threat to security. Any organization using the technology should harden its defenses before it’s deployed.

Warning: Your personal data may be at risk. As RFID (radio frequency identification) devices work their way into consumers’ everyday lives, the potential for data breaches grows rapidly.

RFID technology used to be used primarily to track warehouse operations and perform inventory control through. Now, this same technology is finding its way into smart keys — keys that merely need to come close to a lock in order to unlock it. RFID transponders now speed travelers through toll booths and gas stations without requiring users to whip out credit cards or old-fashioned cash.

But these modern-day marvels can be quickly and easily read by the devices the user intends to use them with, they can also be easily read by someone with nefarious intentions. Even worse, vendors are moving RFID short-distance transmissions into long-distance delivery via wireless networks and satellite relays. All of this happens over a patchwork of hardware and software that often defies PCI (payment card industry) compliance rules and best-practice network security.

“RFID can communicate lots of different data. RFID tags need a validation process. Users have to know what is acceptable and what the guidelines are. There is no one standard for this. Too many proprietary systems are in use,” Steve Salvitti, senior vice president of enterprise mobility for InfoLogix, told CRM Buyer.

A new survey by the Computing Technology Industry Association (CompTIA) finds that use of radio frequency identification technology is on the rise in a variety of industries. Among the most popular applications are asset tracking, personal identification, supply chain, retail management and closed-loop manufacturing.

The worldwide survey of 155 IT companies found that 46 percent of their customers have implemented one or more RFID solutions, either as pilot projects or production deployments. This is an increase from a 2007 survey, when IT companies reported 34 percent of their customers had initiated RFID projects. Customers come from a cross section of industries, including services, government, finance, healthcare , retail, communications and manufacturing. Continue reading »

The first prototype cell to use photonic crystals looks promising.

Researchers at MIT have unveiled a new type of silicon solar cell that could be much more efficient and cost less than currently used solar cells. Materials science and engineering professor Lionel Kimerling and his colleagues presented results of the first device prototype at a recent meeting of the Materials Research Society in Boston.

The design combines a highly effective reflector on the back of a solar cell with an antireflective coating on the front. This helps trap red and near-infrared light, which can be used to make electricity, in the silicon. The research team is licensing similar technology to StarSolar, a startup in Cambridge, MA.

A transmission electron microscopy (TEM) image shows the back surface of a five-micrometer-thick silicon solar cell. The alternating layers of silicon and silicon dioxide form an excellent light reflector. The crests and troughs send the reflected light into the silicon at a low angle that keeps it trapped inside the silicon for a long time, increasing the efficiency of the cell.

The researchers applied their light-trapping scheme on thin silicon cells that are about five micrometers thick. Their prototype solar cell is 15 percent more efficient at converting light into electricity than commercial thin-film solar cells. Project leader Peter Bermel, who is StarSolar’s chief technology officer, says that sophisticated computer simulations suggest that much greater gains in efficiency are possible.

Thin-film silicon solar cells could be cheaper than conventional devices because they use hundreds of times less material. Conventional solar cells use silicon wafers that are approximately 200 micrometers thick, while thin-film devices have thicknesses of a few micrometers. But thin-film devices suffer from lower efficiencies. This is mainly because of the red and near-infrared photons, which don’t stay trapped inside the thin silicon long enough to get absorbed.

Today’s solar cells are backed with a metal layer, typically aluminum, to reflect light. But this scheme does not work very well, and of the light inside the silicon solar cell, thirty percent is lost every time it bounces off the metal. Continue reading »