May 2007 Archive of engeniusBLOG

As weird as they look, I have a certain fondness for Bluetooth headsets because they always make me think of my childhood heartthrob Lt. Uhura, everyone's favorite communication officer on the Starship Enterprise. Besides being a pioneering role model for African-American women, her low-cut uniform and high-tech headset presaged the geek-chic look twenty-five years ahead of its time. While we may not be able to open a hailing frequency, or decode an Antarean sub-space transmission, with the Bluetooth headsets that have blossomed lately in so many ears, they certainly give us a taste of what the future may look like. And now that reality is bumping up against fiction, I've got mixed feelings ab...  -- Click Here to Read More >>

This seems to be the age of sleaze. From the no-bid contracts to the likes of Halliburton and other profiteers; from the lies coming daily from Washington about WMDs, terrorist threats, firing of US Attorneys and the World Bank, to name just a few; from corporate greed like the firing of senior (more expensive) staff at Circuit City, which backfired on the bottom line; from the lies that daily emanate from Israel to support a life of terror for peoples from whom that state has stolen their lands; from the cover-up that depleted uranium has wrought on the health of the children of Iraq.

Maybe it is just the information bandwidth we now have. If you go back nearly two hundred years communications were still very primitive. It wasn't until the magnificent steamship The Great Eastern finally laid the first reliable transatlantic cable in 1866 that news across The Atlantic took less than two weeks to arrive.

The practicality of the time change from two weeks' wa...  -- Click Here to Read More >>

National Public Radio's recent story about how the Scent Marketing Institute is helping gas stations to spread the smell of coffee at their gas pumps to spur sales at their convenience stores got me to wondering about whether this is an early warning of an imminent olfactory invasion afoot. Until now, most of the public odors (not counting public restrooms) we've lived with, both pleasant and unpleasant, have been un-manipulated byproducts of the natural world: our own activities providing a scent-scape which was often more informative than what we were seeing or hearing. I worry about a day when the forces of commerce start cluttering our nasal radar with noise and false information instead of the cues that we count on for our sense of place.

Whether it's the subtle mix of popcorn, salt air, and slightly stale fr...  -- Click Here to Read More >>

It used to be said of the race to space that it would create many inventions and techniques which would lead to technological benefits to the general population of our earth. That may nowadays be rephrased to the fact that military works are now looking to expand into civilian roles.

It goes beyond the civilian purchases of Humvees (as this editor's spouse would say, "Do you want Armageddon!?") about which my attitude is that, if you want to drive one, I'll be happy to point you in the direction of your nearest Army recruitment office. Non-jittered GPS is a very good example; and a very bad example at the same time, because we have become incredibly dependent on a system that could be taken out of service by a man-made force, or by nature in the form of solar flares.

The latest flurry of military vendors looking to expand into the civilian market is in the form of the UAV (unmanned -- uninhabited might be more apropos -- aerial vehicle).

I don't rem...  -- Click Here to Read More >>

If Melanie Rieback has her way, we could soon have a way to control who reads the numerous RFID tags in our lives - without having to resort to wearing an aluminum foil suit. That's because Ms Rieback's current work as a graduate student at the Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam focuses on developing a handheld device that will act as a wireless firewall that can provide selective access or full blocking of devices attempting to read RFID tags that are on your person or immediate surroundings. Since RFID manufacturers as well as the numerous businesses and government agencies that use these devices don't seem to take our personal privacy and security seriously, it's great to see that we may have a means of taking care of the matter ourselves.

Dubbed the RFID Guardian, the device was inspired by Ms Rieback's research which showed that most current commercial RFID devices (including those with 4...  -- Click Here to Read More >>

A few years ago I had the wonderful experience of being at home when a once-in-a-generation windstorm hit on the Oregon Coast. It was never classified as a hurricane but my anemometer clocked the circular winds at +120 mph. After the terrifying fifteen minutes of this event -- a scene right out of Hitchcock's The Birds -- I was able to take stock of the outside world. We had lost a large section of the roof and there were shingles absolutely everywhere. Their nails would turn up around the yard for months afterwards.

I first checked on an elderly neighbor who had also lost a lot of her roof; after I had found she was OK, I walked past -- and through -- the downed power and cable TV lines the mile or so to my daughter's elementary school where they were all huddled down safely. The only noise in the streets was the emergency generator at the hospital…

After finally getting the insurance adjuster onto the premises (they were rather busy) he cut a check ...  -- Click Here to Read More >>