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Technology | Working to make the internet safe

Posted by: on: May 22, 2008

VeriSign

VeriSign helps protect the global net

As the need for security on the internet continues to grow, one of the the guardians of the networked world lays claim to an enviable record.

In its 13 years in business, VeriSign says it has maintained a “100% up time” service in operating the infrastructure that controls the internet.

The firm has a crucial role in the day-to-day operation of the internet – it manages two of the world’s 13 root servers, which direct global internet traffic; it routes every web address ending in .com or .net; and it issues secure digital certificates to protect more than 900,000 web servers on the net.

In a rare insight into just how VeriSign works, the company invited the BBC into one of the main data centres where security is at the heart of everything.

The building itself is one of hundreds that dot Silicon Valley’s landscape; bland and unremarkable on the outside.

This is our most secure room. VeriSign has more than 4,000 employees worldwide and there are only six people in the whole company who have access to this space

Ralph Claar, Verisign, on the inner sanctum

There is no fancy corporate sign on the manicured strip of lawn to hint that it is owned or operated by VeriSign. Steps up to the entrance were deliberately built to ensure nobody would try to ram the building. Cameras and motion detectors are everywhere to be seen. The reflecting windows on the outside are fake.

Inside is altogether more of what you would expect.

At each stage, at least two forms of authentication are required to enter various parts of the building, including door passes and fingerprint or handprint scanners.

“We are a regulated industry with the biggest banks in the world as our customers, so everything we do here has to be secure,” says Mike Kirwan, vice president of production services.

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BBC NEWS | Technology | Virtual telescope opens night sky

Posted by: on: May 14, 2008

Orion Nebula

The tool contains “terabytes” of data from observatories

Twirling galaxies, exotic nebulae and exploding stars are now just a mouse click away for amateur astronomers.

Microsoft has launched WorldWide Telescope, a free tool that stitches together images from some of the best ground- and space-based telescopes.

Collections include pictures from the Hubble and Spitzer telescopes, as well as the Chandra X-Ray Observatory.

The web-based tool also allows users to pan and zoom around the planets, and trace their locations in the night sky.

“Users can see the X-ray view of the sky, zoom into bright radiation clouds, and then cross-fade into the visible light view and discover the cloud remnants of a supernova explosion from a thousand years ago,” explained Roy Gould, a researcher at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.

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BBC NEWS | Technology | Google denies staff ‘brain drain’

Posted by: on: May 10, 2008

Elliot Schrage

Elliot Schrage was a senior executive at Google

Google has denied there is a brain drain of talent at the firm following the departure of its communications boss to social network Facebook.

Elliot Schrage’s departure as head of global communications and public affairs is the latest in a string of senior Google staff to have quit.

Google spokesman Matt Furman said: “Elliot was a valued member of the Google team and we wish him well.”

He added: “We have a deep management pool at Google.”

The Mountain View company says it gets 1,300 resumes every day. That adds up to nearly a half a million a year from people who want to come and work at the Googleplex HQ, famed for its free gourmet lunches and on site massages.

Facebook’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg clearly sees its latest recruit as something of a coup, telling staff in an email: “Hey everyone. I am writing to you from India to share the really good news that Elliot Schrage will be joining our management team.”

“This is a really important role for us and one that we’ve been trying to find the right person for a while.”

“Elliot’s role will be critical to helping us scale based on our culture that values transparency, openness and honest internal communications.”

Exodus

In the last few months those that have jumped ship to Facebook from Google include leading executives such as Sheryl Sandberg, who is now the network’s chief operating officer, following time as vice president of global sales at Google.

Google campus, Mountain View

Is the Google campus losing its allure?

Other hires from Google to Facebook include Ben Ling who is now director of platform product marketing and Ethan Beard, a former director of social media and now director of business development.

Gideon Yu was previously the chief financial officer (CFO) at YouTube who left shortly after Google acquired it in 2006 and has moved to Facebook to become its CFO.

Facebook has even managed to poach a Google executive chef, Josef Desimone.

A host of other senior engineers and managers have also left in recent months. Some have gone on to start up their own companies or join other early stage ventures such as Zillow, FriendFeed, Twitter and Xobni.

Such defections are being seen by some recruiters in a partially negative light.

John Pulsipher, president of Silicon Valley recruitment firm Wollborg/Michelson, told BBC News: “It does of course not look very good for Google.”

He added: “But for a start up company it’s great. They are always going to be attracted to the big names that helped take a start up like Google to the top.

“They are seen as stars given where they came from. They are like artists who have had a hit song and are also expected to have a hit song the next time out.”

The Google of yesterday

So why has Google lost something of its cachet among the technorati workforce?

Facebook is hot just now but everybody knows that hot can get cold

John Pulsipher, Silicon Valley recruiter

Some commentators have noted that it is no longer the firm it once was.

Far from being a search engine firm with idealistic goals to ‘do no evil’, it has morphed into a behemoth that rivals other large tech companies.

It now has 16,800 employees worldwide. And the opportunities to strike it rich have diminished. Google’s stock option package is not as tempting as it once was now that shares are trading close to $600.

Perhaps more importantly for some, Google no longer has that “anything goes” approach that most start ups possess.

Source

BBC NEWS | Technology | Alarm at Google Yahoo partnering

Posted by: on: May 10, 2008

The exterior of Yahoo headquarters in Sunnyvale, California

No firm deal with Google has actually been announced

Regulators in the US are being urged to investigate any potential online advertising and search partnership between Google and Yahoo.

The call by a coalition of 16 American civil rights and rural advocacy bodies comes despite the fact no firm deal has actually been announced.

“We all suffer in such mega mergers,” Gary Flowers of the Black Leadership Forum told BBC News.

The justice department is examining a trial the companies did in April.

It has been widely reported that it is looking into the anti-trust implications of last month’s two-week test.

However, the department says it has no comment on the coalition’s demands because there is no definitive agreement between Yahoo and Google at the moment.

But reports say that the two companies are presently hammering out the intricacies of a future potential advertising and search agreement, and are sharing their plans with antitrust regulators.

At Google’s shareholder meeting on Thursday, Chairman Eric Schmidt said: “If there were a deal [with Yahoo], we would anticipate structuring the deal to address the anti-trust concerns that have been widely discussed.”

‘Never positive’

This assurance is not good enough for the coalition which is made up of the League of Rural Voters, the National Black Chamber of Commerce and the American Agriculture Movement.

It also includes the Black Leadership Forum, an umbrella group of 36 civil rights organisations including the NAACP and the National Urban League.

In a letter to Assistant Attorney General Thoma Barnett, head of the Justice Department’s anti-trust division, the coalition argues that such a deal would give Google almost 90% of the search advertising market and strengthen its influence over internet users’ access to information.

“We face a possible future in which no content could be seamlessly accessed without Google’s permission,” the letter states.

The effect Mr Flowers says of such large partnerships is never positive and would for the black community, as for other communities, “condense competition, increase prices and limit new business opportunity on the internet”.

‘Do no evil’

League of Rural Voters’ executive director Niel Ritchie claims that the do-no-evil mantra may no longer apply in today’s marketplace in which Google’s reach is apparently without bound, touching more and more aspects of our everyday lives.

“We believe the government should give this agreement very careful scrutiny,” he says.

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Texting while driving? Time to unplug | Technology | Reuters

Posted by: on: April 18, 2008

Photo

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“(Reuters) – Sharon Sarmiento knew it was time to unplug when she realized she was blogging in her dreams and hearing imaginary instant messages.

For Ariel Meadow Stallings, it was the hours lost while surfing the Internet that left her feeling like she had been in a drunken blackout.

Both women are part of a new grass-roots movement in which tech geeks, Internet addicts, BlackBerry thumbers and compulsive IMers are deciding to wrest back control of their lives by daring to switch off — if only for a day.

‘I think there is some common-sense part of us that says, ‘Wait a second. This has gone too far. We are too plugged-in,” said Sarmiento, a 30-something virtual business owner and professional blogger in Alabama.

‘It’s like our mind is going in a million different directions all the time. So taking a day when you are completely cut off from technology forces you to re-engage with the real world,’ she said.”

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Meet the innovators

Posted by: on: April 8, 2008

Four innovations and their creators have been shortlisted for the world’s biggest technology prize, the 2008 Millennium Technology Prize.
But what are they and what impact have they had on the world?
DNA FINGERPRINTING
The DNA fingerprinting technique developed by British geneticist Sir Alec Jeffreys has revolutionised the field of forensic science, and police detective work.
It has also played an important role in the resolution of paternity and immigration disputes.
DNA fingerprints are examined all around the world, even in portable laboratories, and the equipment for genetic fingerprinting is being made by dozens of companies globally.
Sir Alec discovered the technique for DNA fingerprinting in a “Eureka” moment while examining an X-ray that formed part of a DNA experiment, analysing genetic markers for fundamental human studies.
What the experiment revealed, unexpectedly, were extraordinarily variable DNA patterns showing simple inheritance in his technician’s family’s DNA. Sir Alec realised the importance of this discovery, which was in effect a biological identification method.
“That moment changed my life,” he says. And it led to the development of techniques that would fundamentally change this area of science.
Sir Alec is Professor of Genetics at the University of Leicester and continues to work at the genetics laboratory.
ERBIUM-DOPED FIBRE AMPLIFIER (EDFA)
The innovation of Prof David Payne, Dr Emmanuel Desurvire and Dr Randy Giles, has transformed global telecommunications, particularly the world of high-speed and long-distance communication.
Amplifiers are need to boost degraded light signals as they travel through the fibre.
The EDFA eliminated a key problem of amplification in the 1980s, namely the need to convert the light into an electrical signal and then resend with a new laser.
The work or Desurvire, Giles and Payne reduced the cost of creating long-distance fibre-optic networks and “unleashed” the bandwidth of long-distance fibre-optics networks.
The EDFA has led to the rapid rise of the global net, impacting business, education and leisure for billions of people.
The breakthrough of the three scientists was to use the heavy element erbium, which was perfect for amplifying the signal of light used in fibre optic networks.
The first commercial application of the EDFA was in underwater communication cables. The amplifiers sit inside torpedo-like repeaters that are placed in cable every 500km to 800km.
The introduction of these amplifiers led to the depression of the communication satellite markets.
EFDAs are now found in fibre optic networks around the world and the latest amplifiers are the size of a match box.
THE VITERBI ALGORITHM
Dr Andrew Viterbi’s innovation has touched the lives of potentially billions of people. His algorithm advanced the design and implementation of modern wireless communication systems by simplifying the complex and convoluted world of signal processing.
The algorithm is an error-correction scheme for digital communications and is now used every day in billions of mobile phone calls, satellite communications, wireless networks and even MP3 players.
He published his algorithm in 1967 but it did not find an application until computing power became powerful enough to deal with the massive calculations needed to apply it.
Taking the advice of his lawyer, who felt there was no general application for the algorithm, he did not patent it.
He co-founded Qualcomm, helping develop the popular CDMA standard, which is a rival to GSM, and is in use in 3G networks around the world today.
BIOMATERIALS FOR CONTROLLED DRUG RELEASE
Prof Robert Langer is a pioneer of many new technologies, including transdermal delivery systems, which allow the administration of drugs through the skin without needles or other invasive methods.
His work in drug-releasing polymers eventually led to the creation of a novel way to treat brain cancer.
His research into polymers has allowed for more accurate and controlled release of drugs into the body.
Polymers include plastics, DNA and proteins, and while they are mostly thought of as plastics, polymers comprise a large class of natural and synthetic materials with a variety of properties and purposes.
Prof Langer’s breakthrough was to create a three-dimensional matrix structure for polymers which allowed the drug molecules to pass through and into the patient’s system.
His work has also brought about significant advances in tissue engineering, including synthetic replacement for biological tissues.
He has more than 600 issued and pending patents, has published approximately 1,000 articles and 13 books, and is known as the father of controlled drug delivery and tissue engineering.

What can your ink-jet do?

Posted by: on: April 4, 2008

253958853_dea8d75cb0_m And here I thought Xerox was for copying body parts at the office Xmas party. Turns out, printing technology is very flexible and researchers are trying to adapt it to various applications such as water purification machines and printing solar panels.

There’s also a bit of history on PARC (Palo Alto Research Center):

PARC is one of the older–and more productive–industrial incubators. Xerox founded it in 1970, and 30 companies have been spun out of it. Inventions from the lab include the mouse, Ethernet, the Alto (the archetype of the PC), the laser printer, and, ignominiously, the computer worm. It was also one of the first industrial organizations to employ anthropologists and ethnographers. Xerox wanted to know how people actually interacted with copiers (besides hitting them and swearing at them).

I didn’t know private industry did this, perhaps these centers operate in the background and we just don’t hear about them very often.

(via DailyTech) (image via Zixii)

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Dear Carla Bruni-Sarkozy: I love you

Posted by: on: April 1, 2008

Peter Kramer/Getty

Peter Kramer/Getty

Seriously, maybe this is wrong because of the whole third-wife-younger-woman thing, but I don’t care: I think you’re awesome. I can’t remember a cooler, prettier, or more badass first lady. I mean, you slept with Jagger. And Clapton. You read Yeats. You play the guitar. Nude pictures of you sell for a bazillion Euros (which is like double bazillion dollars). You recorded a Serge Gainsbourg tribute song that was actually well received. You speak three languages.The outfit you wore to meet the Queen this week? The one with the pillbox hat? The one that’s making everyone compare you to Jackie O? Brilliant. I also like your hair, makeup and skin. Keep on keepin on, Madame Sarkozy. I’m psyched for your new life. I’m especially excited to see what you’ll wear.

Related: jackie o, carla bruni-sarkozy

Israel to Build on Contested Land

Posted by: on: April 1, 2008

Israel announced plans to build 1,400 new apartments in the West Bank and disputed part of Jerusalem, despite warnings by Palestinians and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice that they could hurt peace efforts between the two sides.

While the announcement Monday could further damage the standing of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak moved on Tuesday to bolster the moderate leader, saying he will consider opening the Gaza Strip’s crossings if Palestinian militants there stop bombarding Israel with rockets.

The Israeli announcement on new construction came shortly after Rice wrapped up a two-day visit and left for Amman to meet Abbas. In the Jordanian capital, Rice said Israel should stop such construction projects, but to no avail.

The move reflects the political weakness of Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, who continues to support construction in disputed areas because it allows him to keep his fragile coalition intact — though it does damage to Abbas’ position.

Olmert insisted Israel is building only in places it intends to keep even after a peace treaty is signed.

At a U.S.-hosted peace conference in November, Israel and the Palestinians agreed to relaunch long-stalled talks and base negotiations on the 2003 “road map” peace plan. The U.S.-backed proposal calls on Israel to freeze all settlement activity and the Palestinians to rein in militants.

But Israel does not consider construction in east Jerusalem to be settlement activity because the Jewish state annexed it after capturing it in the 1967 Mideast war. The international community disagrees, however, because no one has recognized Israel’s annexation.

East Jerusalem is home to 180,000 Jews who live in neighborhoods built after the war. An additional 270,000 Jews live in West Bank settlements, most of them in three major blocs.

Palestinians charge that the ongoing construction is sabotaging peace efforts. Although they tacitly agree that Israel will, in the end, retain some or all of these areas, the bulldozers, cranes and work crews are tangible evidence to Palestinians that peace negotiations are not helping their cause, further complicating Abbas’ position.

But the Israeli defense minister’s openness to easing restrictions on Gaza could help reduce pressure on Abbas. Barak had previously opposed opening passages to the territory, which is controlled by Islamic Hamas militants.

Israel closed the crossings after Hamas overran Gaza in June, and has only let in limited humanitarian supplies since.

Political realities appeared to have driven Olmert’s announcement Monday. With his popularity battered by his inconclusive 2006 war against Hezbollah guerrillas in Lebanon, he depends on Shas, a hawkish ultra-Orthodox party, for his coalition government’s parliamentary majority.

The announcement of 600 new housing units to go up in Jerusalem came from the Jerusalem city hall, but the larger project — 800 new apartments in Beitar Illit, an ultra-Orthodox settlement outside Jerusalem — came from Shas. Olmert is not in a position to deny it: Shas leaders have made repeated threats to bring down his government if Olmert crosses them.

Rice arrived in the region on Saturday for three days of talks with Israeli and Palestinian officials meant to advance the U.S. goal of achieving a peace agreement before President Bush leaves office in January 2009.

A senior U.S. official said the U.S. would like to push for an outline of an interim peace agreement by the time Bush visits the region in May.

At a news conference with Abbas in Jordan, Rice said it was her impression both sides were serious about advancing the talks. “I think it’s all moving in the right direction,” she said.

But she also warned Israel to halt new settlement activities that could upset progress. “Settlement activity should stop — expansion should stop,” Rice said.

Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat condemned the construction plans and appealed to the Americans to intervene. “This announcement is changing the situation on the ground for the worse,” Erekat said.

U.S. Embassy spokesman Stewart Tuttle declined to comment on the developments.

Meanwhile, in violence Tuesday, Israeli troops shot and killed two Hamas gunmen during a raid on the central Gaza Strip, Hamas said. The army confirmed troops operating against rocket launching squads in the area shot toward two gunmen who approached them.

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Posted by: on: March 30, 2008


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