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Covert lie detection technology to be trialled in Britain

Submitted by gary on Mon, 09/05/2011 - 08:16

A COVERT lie detection system using thermal imaging cameras and powerful software to spot tell-tale signs of deception is to be trialled at an undisclosed airport in Britain, The (London) Sunday Times reported.

The system could be used during customs interviews and at passport control to check whether people entering the country are giving a true account of themselves.

A key element will be that people under scrutiny will not know they are being monitored for truthfulness.

The airport where it will be tested is not known but if it works it could be installed in others around Britain.

Hassan Ugail, a Professor of visual computing at the University of Bradford and who designed the system, said, "In an interview you can be talking to a person, then you basically just press a computer button and say: was this person lying or not?"

Such systems could lead to sharp improvements in security but also raise issues of privacy and misuse. They could, for example, be deployed in ethically debatable situations such as business meetings, schools or even by suspicious spouses and parents.Ugail built his system around the observations that when people lie their brain activity rises as they work out the most plausible tale to spin.

This extra activity is reflected by tiny changes in facial expression which can be measured by a video camera linked to a computer.

Additionally, the same surges in brain activity cause corresponding changes in the patterns of blood flow around the face.

Ugail's system is still experimental and its success rate in detecting lies is about 60-70 per cent. He believes this will rise as the system is refined.

JB Hi-Fi to offer cloud music service

Submitted by gary on Mon, 08/08/2011 - 17:02

Australian electronics retailer JB Hi-Fi has this morning announced plans for an online music streaming service for Australian customers by mid 2012, taking on Sony and beating big names like Amazon to the local punch.

JB Hi-Fi's CEO Terry Smart dropped the streaming music bombshell this morning at the announcement of the retailer's $134.4 million net profit after tax for the year ending 30 June 2011.

The service, called "JB Hi-Fi Now", will sport around 100,000 local and international artists at launch, with an offering of between six and eight million tracks.

"We will continue to grow this number over time," Smart promised.

"The service will allow for unlimited access and listening to music from your Mac, PC or mobile device," he added.

The company's investor presentation reveals that Mac and PC users will get the streaming service first with mobile user support coming later.

Smart told ZDNet Australia that the company intends to roll the service out to all mobile platforms, including Android, Windows Phone 7 and BlackBerry.

"We plan to be across all platforms over time," he said.

Smart also remarked to ZDNet Australia that the new streaming offering has been six months in the making, and is supported by an internally developed private cloud infrastructure. Pricing for the service will also be based on a subscription model rather than pay-per-song access, Smart said.

"It will be a subscription-based model, either monthly or pre-paid for a year," Smart toldZDNet Australia, adding that the service had been developed with the "blessing" of all of the major music labels. The blessing, Smart said, means that the JB Hi-FI Now service won't suffer any legal headaches over copyright.

"We're dealing with all the major labels in getting the repertoire from that. We don't anticipate any legal issues at all. This is all being done with the blessing from the labels and commercial arrangements, and that's the important thing," he said.

Amazon's music streaming service and Apple's iCloud have both been said to be heading for possible legal headaches when dealing with music in the cloud, while Google's Music offering has been aiming to carefully sidestep legal complications since its inception.

JB Hi-Fi's service will eventually become a music download store, building on the store's strong background in the music retail sector.

The electronics and media retailer hinted that the store may also become a digital software marketplace.

"Post launch, the 'JB Hi-Fi Now' digital platform will continue to develop and provide us with opportunities to leverage our existing strong software supplier relationships," the company revealed in its investor presentation, making it a future challenger for the Mac App Store, for example.

Teen 'iOS hacker' says he can access Spotify in unsupported countries

Submitted by gary on Sat, 07/30/2011 - 09:11

The teenage hacker who unlocked Apple's iOS 5 software just one day after it was released to developers is at it again, and this time he says he's figured out a way to bring the music service Spotify to parts of the world where the service isn't offered yet. Mert Erdir, 17, of Turkey, tweeted this week that he'd found a way to access the highly sought-after music service in unsupported countries and was willing to share the method with his followers on Twitter.

Spotify is a popular European music service that recently launched in the U.S. and has so far been well-received.

The service gives users access to a large catalog of music for free with advertising, or with no advertising for $4.99 a month, or for $9.99 a month with no ads and access to music from a smartphone.

But despite the hype and high demand for Spotify, the service is so far available in eight only countries.

Erdir, however, said it wasn't a "big deal" accessing the service from an unsupported country. Using a proxy site to change the access location on the Web, Spotify can be tricked into thinking a user is accessing from one of its supported countries. But an invite is still needed for this method, Erdir said in an email.

"This is by far the best free streaming option!" Erdir said in his tweet.

Spotify said it had no comment regarding Erdir's method to access Spotify, and it has not announced any plans to continue expanding its service to other countries.

- LA Times

It's official: time machines won't work

Submitted by gary on Sat, 07/30/2011 - 09:05

Doc's super fast car won't do it. Neither will Bill and Ted's magic telephone booth. Physicists at the Hong Kong University of Technology and Science have just proved that no machine will ever allow a person to travel through time because time travel is flat-out impossible. Not just unlikely, or we don't have the technology yet, but, beyond the limits of the physical laws of the universe.

You might think time travel has always belonged in the world of fantasy, but 10 years ago some scientists began to believe time travel might actually be possible when superluminal - or faster-than-light - propagation of some specific medium were discovered. It was later found to be a visual effect, but the idea that a single photon could exceed the speed of light lingered, and with it, the possibility of time travel.

But in a study published in the peer-reviewed scientific journal Physical Review Letters, Shengwang Du and his team measured the ultimate speed of a single photon and showed that it cannot move faster than the speed of light.

"The results add to our understanding of how a single photon moves. They also confirm the upper bound on how fast information travels with light," Du said in a statement put out by the Hong Kong University of Technology and Science.

"By showing that single photons cannot travel faster than the speed of light, our results bring a closure to the debate on the true speed of information carried by a single photon."

For more on the science behind time travel, check out "How to build a time machine", written last year by the one and only Stephen Hawking.

LA Times

Apple's Lion roars onto computers with 1 million downloads in a day

Submitted by gary on Fri, 07/22/2011 - 20:16

In the space of 24 hours, Mac owners in 123 countries around the world downloaded more than 1 million copies of Apple's latest operating system, Mac OS X 10.7 Lion.

The download milestone makes Lion the fastest-selling OS in Apple’s history.

The operating system is priced at $29.99 in the US Apple App Store - meaning that Apple earned close to one million dollars each hour the software was on sale during the first day (figures could be slightly lower taking into account that Lion can be installed on multiple computers associated with a single iTunes account).

"Lion is off to a great start," boasted Philip Schiller, Apple's senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing, adding that "user reviews and industry reaction have been fantastic."

Almost 10,500 people have rated Lion in the US Mac App Store to date leaving an average rating of four and a half stars.

A recent report on WindowsITPro suggests that Microsoft continues to sell around 20 million copies of its latest operating system Windows 7 every month, almost two years after its release.

Updated Mac Mini, MacBook Air, Cinema Display

Submitted by Dallas on Fri, 07/22/2011 - 10:21

Coinciding with the release of Lion, there have been some major updates to Apple's product line including an updated Mac Mini, MacBook Air and Cinema Display. The MacBook has also been discontinued, and is presently only available to educational institutions. Here are some of the major updates:

Mac Mini
-Up to 2x faster processors and graphics
-High-speed Thunderbolt I/O
-Bluetooth 4.0
-No longer an optical drive
-Base model now starts at A$699.00

MacBook Air
-Backlit keyboard
-Bluetooth 4.0
-High-speed Thunderbolt I/O
-Base model now starts at A$1099.00

Apple Thunderbolt Display 27"
-Single Thunderbolt connection
-Supports FaceTime camera, audio, USB, Firewire 800 and Ethernet through the Display
-Retails for A$1199.00

OS X 10.7 Lion Released

Submitted by Dallas on Fri, 07/22/2011 - 10:11

Apple released yesterday their next-generation operating system, OS X 10.7 Lion, which is available exclusively through the App Store for A$31.99. This new release brings many new features to the Mac including full screen applications, an iOS-like launch screen called LaunchPad, a new interface referred to as Mission Control (combining dashboard, expose, and spaces), improved multi-touch gestures, and improvements to a number of core applications such as Mail, iChat, and iCal.

“Lion is the best version of OS X yet, and we’re thrilled that users around the world can download it starting today,” said Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing. “Lion makes upgrading a Mac easier than ever before; just launch the Mac App Store, buy Lion with your iTunes account, and the download and install process will begin automatically.”

Lion is only available through the App Store, which means you will need Snow Leopard in order to upgrade to Lion.

For more information on Lion, visit http://www.apple.com/au/macosx/

Google+ Improves on Facebook

Submitted by gary on Thu, 07/14/2011 - 16:26

Google, the most popular Web site on earth, is worried about the second-most popular site. That, of course, would be Facebook.Why else would Google keep trying, over and over again, to create a social network of the same type? Orkut, Jaiku, Wave, Buzz — Google has lobbed forth one fizzled flop after another.

And now there’s Google+. It’s the latest Google “we wanna be Facebook” project. The difference is, this one’s got a real shot.

Instead of throwing open its doors with a big splash, as it did with the hopelessly confusing Wave and the privacy-challenged Buzz, Google is letting Google+ seep into the world virally. You can’t yet just go sign up; you have to be invited by someone who’s already a member.

Even so, Google+ already has millions of members. That’s not quite 750 million (Facebook’s current tally), but watch out for the network effect.

At first, Google+ looks like a shameless Facebook duplicate. There’s a place for you to make Posts (your thoughts and news, like Facebook’s Wall); there’s a Stream (an endless scrolling page of your friends’ posts, like Facebook’s News Feed); and even a little +1 button (a clone of Facebook’s Like button), which may be where Google+ gets its peculiar name.

But there’s one towering, brilliant difference: Circles.

On Google+, you put the people of your life’s different social circles into — well, into Circles. That is, groups. Categories. Google starts you off with empty circles called Friends, Acquaintances, Family and Following (people you don’t know, but want to follow, as you would on Twitter). It’s a piece of cake to add new ones. They can be tiny circles (“Granny and Gramps”) or big ones (“Family Tree”), organization-based (“Fantasy League Buddies”) or arbitrary (“Annoying People”).

Creating them is a blast: an array of tiles represents your online acquaintances, which it assembles from your Gmail and other accounts. You drag each one into an actual on-screen circle, where they tumble into place. You can drag a person into more than one circle, of course. The lucky encircled friend will know that you’ve added him or her to a circle, but not which one, thank heaven.

From now on, every time you share something — a news item, a thought, a photo, a chat invitation — you can specify exactly which Circles receive it. In one fell swoop, Google has solved the layers-of-privacy problem that has dogged Facebook for years.

Senators embarrassed by their children’s drunken party photos. Potential employers reading about your crazy nightlife. Girlfriends learning accidentally about their beaus’ proposal plans. All of it goes away with Circles. You share each item with only the people who deserve to know. And simultaneously, you spare the masses from seeing news of no interest to them; why should the whole world be in on your discussion of this Friday’s bowling outing?

You’re spared, too. You can click a Circle’s name to filter the scrolling blurbs. You can view only the work-related posts, only your college buddies’ posts, or only your grandparents’ posts, with one click apiece.

Facebook has something similar, called Lists. But compared with Circles, it’s buried and a lot more effort to use. In Google+, you have to specify who gets each post or each photo (although it remembers your last selections). That’s actually a little annoying — you can’t just type an update and hit Enter — but over all, the benefits outweigh the hassle.

Google gives Facebook a run for its money

Submitted by gary on Mon, 07/11/2011 - 13:09

Google+ is in field trials with an invitation-only audience in 44 languages. Google is not saying how many thousands of people are in the trial, but a large bulk of the invitations in Australia were distributed to ad agencies and media owners.

This is Google's third attempt to crack the social networking formula. Its previous efforts, Buzz and Wave, failed to lure users but the view from observers is that Google got it right this time. And it could be the game changer that kills Facebook, despite its 750 million-strong membership.

"I was sceptical before, but now that I've had some time on it I think it has a good chance of rivalling Facebook," says Cathie McGinn, strategy director for media agency Mindshare Sydney. "Google+ is a well thought out, intuitive platform that thinks about the user experience. I can see the potential for a couple of our clients and I'm going to be talking to them about it very soon."

One of the most praised features of Google+ is the Circles function, which allows users to categorise their friends into distinct groups -- for example, close friends, colleagues, interest groups and family -- and choose who gets to see which updates.

Trial participants say this is more in line with social behaviour in the real world. Also praised are the mobile group chat (Huddle) and group video chat (Hangouts) features.

Sparks, another feature, uses Google's immense search engine power to deliver a constant stream of "shareable" content to a user on chosen topics, and visible to their nominated Circles.

For advertisers, the biggest benefit of Google+ would be the enhanced ad-serving relevance it will deliver Google, said M&C Saatchi Australia managing director David Whittle.

"Google will learn more about people and be able to serve them more relevant advertising," he said. "Google isn't going out in the marketplace saying, 'Hey, the greatest benefit of this product is going to be targeted advertising', but that's what it is -- and it's going to be amazing."

Google opened the trial to advertisers last Thursday. In a YouTube video, Google product manager Christian Oestlien said: "We're going to take a small group of brands, businesses and other entities and create profiles for them and see how users interact with them via Circles, through the stream and even how they communicate with them through Hangouts."

Iain McDonald, founder of digital agency Amnesia Razorfish, said advertisers should get involved in Google+ early.

"I would advise every client to get on board and try it," he said.

"If you've been a social laggard in Facebook, it's a great time for a brand to jump into this and benefit from being an early adopter."

According to internal Mindshare analysis, mounting criticism of Facebook over security issues coupled with a decline in users in markets such as the US and Britain "may give Google the opportunity it needs to lead disaffected users to a platform with superior privacy and sharing capabilities".

In Australia, Facebook user numbers dropped 1.7 per cent month on month in June.

Google+ has tight privacy settings and a function allowing users to retrieve and delete their information at any time.

"No doubt Facebook has a tremendous penetration globally, but Google+ is more useful from a business sense and a personal sense," Mr Whittle said.

"A lot of people now run their personal life on Facebook and their business life on Twitter.

"With Google+, you can do that on one platform. Remember when MySpace was unstoppable?"

MacBook Air, OS X Lion due next week?

Submitted by gary on Fri, 07/08/2011 - 23:41

The ides of July are almost upon us. And that can mean only thing: the arrival of OS X Lion with the refreshed MacBook Air in tow. At least, that's what two Apple enthusiast sites are reporting.

9to5Mac says that a "few overseas sources" tell them that "Apple Retail stores are planning 'overnights' on July 13th." Overnights typically entail a refresh of Apple store displays and training on new products.

And AppleInsider is hearing similar chatter, citing a "bulletin" posted to Apple's internal retail news network "advising store management to perform RAM upgrades to certain Mac models on the showroom floors by Sunday, July 10th at the latest." The deduction: this is needed to ready those models for upgrades to Lion.

Probably not coincidentally, the OS X Lion page on Apple's site shows the new operating system running on the MacBook Air

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