It was meant to be a tradition wedding with the bride wearing white, the groom a tuxedo and 500 guests watching the ceremony. But instead of standing together to take their vows, Samuel Kim and Helen Oh were seven miles apart as she said 'I do' on a computer screen. The couple married in Fullerton, southern California, on Skype video after he fell ill and landed in a hospital isolation ward.
The system would dwarf a network of 40,000 security cameras installed in the capital of China's far-western Xinjiang region last year, following deadly July 2009 clashes between Muslim Uighurs and members of the majority Han group.
Chongqing's more than 500,000 cameras, which are due to be installed by 2012, will mainly be used for crime prevention, emergency controls and rescue operations, a police spokesman told the Global Times.The computerised cameras will be managed under one network, allowing authorities and emergency services in the province-sized area of more than 30 million people to share the video feeds, the paper said.
A crackdown on organised crime two years ago in the sprawling municipality led to numerous high-level prosecutions for corruption and mafia crime that have shocked the nation as it revealed Chongqing's underworld.
A study by Transportation Alternatives found that up to 45 percent of traffic in an area of Brooklyn was caused by cars circling the streets looking for parking. And in 2006, UCLA professor of urban planning Donald Shoup calculated that, within a year, vehicles searching for parking in a small business district in LA consumed 47,000 gallons of gas and produced 730 tons of carbon dioxide.
Faced by such shocking numbers, the default reaction of some people has been to look to technology for an answer. Let's invent a system, they resolved, that enables drivers to find open parking spaces without delay. A team at Rutgers University, for example, uses ultrasonic sensors, GPS receivers and cellular networks to find empty parking spaces; they relay this information to drivers using internet maps and navigation systems.
To optimize the search process, the Rutgers team placed ultrasonic sensors on the passenger-side door of three cars and used them to collect data on empty parking spaces over a period of two months during daily commutes through Highland Park, New Jersey. From this, the engineers developed an algorithm that used these ultrasound readings to reveal the number of available parking spaces with 95 percent accuracy. By combining this information with GPS data, they were able to produce maps of occupied and unoccupied spaces that were 90 percent accurate.
Mobile phone base stations no bigger than a golf ball could help to bridge the digital divide and bring mobile broadband to distant areas both in the developing and developed world, the networking company Alcatel-Lucent has claimed.
The company said on Monday that its new technology, which shrinks many of the functions of a standard base station down to a few chips which fit in a cube it calls "lightRadio", would mean that mobile networks could run their systems with lower power demands and half the cost overall, while broadening deployment. The "lightRadio" technology, which will be tested by a number of mobile operators around the world including Orange, Verizon in the US and the world's largest network, China Mobile, could halve network operating costs and do the same for power demands, said Wim Sweldens, head of the company's mobile business at a presentation in London.
The base stations – reduced from the bulky cabinet of past years to a system-on-a-chip integrated circuit made by semiconductor company Freescale – can be installed wherever there is electricity, and can then connect either over an internet connection or via microwave links to processing units elsewhere.
In an age of commemorating birthdays, weddings and anniversaries on Facebook and Twitter, it was perhaps inevitable that live Web-streaming funerals for friends and loved ones would be next.
It is no surprise that the deaths of celebrities, like Michael Jackson, or honored political figures, like the United States diplomat Richard Holbrooke, are promoted as international Web events. So, too, was the memorial service for the six people killed Jan. 8 in Tucson, which had thousands of viewers on the Web.But now the once-private funerals and memorials of less-noted citizens are also going online.
Several software companies have created easy-to-use programs to help funeral homes cater to bereaved families. FuneralOne a one-stop shop for online memorials that is based in St. Clair, Mich., has seen the number of funeral homes offering Webcasts increase to 1,053 in 2010, from 126 in 2008 (it also sells digital tribute DVDs).
During that same period, Event by Wire, a competitor in Half Moon Bay, Calif., watched the number of funeral homes live-streaming services jump to 300 from 80. And this month, the Service Corporation International in Houston, which owns 2,000 funeral homes and cemeteries, including the venerable Frank E. Campbell funeral chapel on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, said it was conducting a pilot Webcasting program at 16 of its funeral homes.
The heads of US intelligence agencies have been testifying before a congressional committee on issues regarding threats to the country's national security. Recent political revolts have exposed the failure of intelligence services to timely alert the White House about the situations in Egypt and Tunisia.
Questions have emerged as to how the intelligence services were less well informed than people on Facebook and Twitter about the spirit of revolution enveloping the Middle East.
Information is power, but 21st century technology has unleashed an information revolution, and now the genie is out of the bottle. Youtube, Facebook and Twitter have become the new weapons of mass mobilisation; geeks have taken on dictators; bloggers are dissidents; and social networks have become rallying forces for social justice.
As people around the world challenge authorities, from Iran to Tunisia, Egypt to Yemen, entire societies are being transformed as ordinary citizens see the difference, imagine the alternative, and come together to organise for a better future.
So, are social networks triggering social revolution? And where will the next domino fall?
Joining Marwan Bishara to discuss these issues are: Carl Bernstein, a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist; Amy Goodman, the host and executive producer of Democracy Now!; Professor Emily Bell, the director of digital journalism at Columbia University; Evgeny Morozov, the author of The Net Delusion: The Dark Side of Internet Freedom; Professor Clay Shirky, the author of Cognitive Surplus: Creativity and Generosity in a Connected Age.
This episode of Empire can be seen from Thursday, February 17, at the following times GMT: Thursday: 0630, 2030; Friday: 1230; Saturday: 0130; Sunday: 0630, 2010.
More than five decades after the Cuban revolution, the Caribbean island has embraced the digital revolution. A high-speed fibre optic Internet cable connecting Cuba with Venezuela arrived on the island on Wednesday. It was brought ashore in a ceremony attended by dignitaries from both countries.
Officials say it will provide a connection speed 3,000 times faster than at present. Despite the revamped access, authorities say Internet use will be limited to “social” purposes and that priority would be given to developing public Internet access centres, especially in universities and other educational institutions.
More than a million people die in car accidents each year but experts in the industry now believe fatal smashes could be eliminated. Some hope there could be an end to car crashes altogether. Scientists and engineers are developing technology and enhancements to cars that would aid drivers to the extent that crashes would become rarer events. Bad weather conditions and poor judgement would be mitigated by the car itself.
But in the short term the focus is on car crash victims, with sophisticated technology being mapped out to ensure drivers can survive even truly catastrophic accidents..
...Volvo believe in the future they can stop cars from ever crashing. They are developing auto-braking technology to ensure cars come to a stop when they sense another car coming close to them - both from the front and the side...
...At General Motors' research lab in Detroit, scientists are investigating how the car itself can make up for our shortcomings - by enhancing the driver's senses.They are developing a prototype windscreen, which they hope will give drivers a kind of "superhuman" vision - the Advanced Vision System.
World leaders are facing calls to amend the Geneva and Hague conventions to draw up “rules of engagement” for “cyber war”. Here are some of main types of cyber attack:
Denial-of-Service (DoS):Also known as distributed denial-of-service attack (DdoS), this involves crmiinals attempting to bring down or cripple individual websites, computers or networks often by flooding them with messages.
Malware:
Malicious software designed to take over individuals’ computers in order to spread a bug onto other people’s devices or social networking profiles. It can also infect a computer and turn it into part of a “botnet” – networks of computers controlled remotely by hackers known as “herders” to spread spam or virusus.
State cyber attacks:US and Israeli intelligence agencies are believed to have recently used a mysterious computer virus called Stuxnet to carry out an invisible attack on Iran’s secretive nuclear programme.President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad recently admitted that its facilities had been infected by the programme which appears to target and disable uranium enrichment centrifuges....
Britons have become so reliant on their cars that most spend more than one working day (10 hours) every week driving. This compares to just 3.7 hours spent walking, 2.7 hours showering and 4.6 hours socialising with friends and family.
The yearly total of 7,413 miles is the equivalent of driving from London to Cape Town and comes at an average costs of £1,078. As the need for social, shopping and commuting mobility has increased, motorists now spend nearly two more days driving every year than they did ten years ago. The average motorist now spends three full years of their life driving. Men spend 533 hours behind the wheel each year, which is longer than women who spend 506 hours driving each year. Men are also more likely to undertake longer, one-off drives - spending 21 hours a year driving on weekend trips and 29 hours behind the wheel on business.
The top journey for women on the other hand is the daily drive to work (122 hours a year), followed by shopping trips (91 hours) and visiting friends and family (96 hours).
A mobile phone application which claims to identify adults posing as children is to be released.The team behind Child Defence says the app can analyse language to generate an age profile, identifying potential paedophiles.
Isis Forensics developed the tool after parental concerns over children accessing sites on their mobiles.But child protection experts warned against such technology lulling people into thinking they are safe.
Child Defence project leader James Walkerdine, based at Lancaster University, said: "This software improves children's chances of working out that something isn't right."Parents told us they would much prefer to see software solutions that empowered and educated their children to help them protect themselves."
Child campaigning charity NSPCC hopes the application will encourage children to report the crime - but warned of complacency.
The phone, which will run Google's Android operating system, will take pictures of the Earth later this year.The project is being run by a British firm called Surrey Satellite Technology Limited, based in Guildford, which wants to test a modern phone in the most hostile environment possible, the BBC reported.
Although it will be a smartphone, the precise model has not been disclosed. It will be the first time a phone has gone into orbit.
Shaun Kenyon, the project manager, said: "Modern smartphones are pretty amazing."They come now with processors that can go up to 1GHz, and they have loads of flash memory. First of all, we want to see if the phone works up there, and if it does, we want to see if the phone can control a satellite.
Use of mobile phones has been banned by a local council in northern India. The reason given is to ban unmarried women from carrying mobile phones and also to halt romances between youngsters from different castes.
In Uttar Pradesh state, the Baliyan council has decided to ban mobile phone after a series of elopements. Over the last year, at least 23 couples eloped against their parents wishes. Jatin Raghuvanshi, a village elder, commented that the panchayat (assembly) was convinced that the reason of the recent surge in series of elopement was cell phones as the young loves planned their elopement over using them...
...A spokesman for the village assembly, Satish Tyagi, has said that all parents were told to ensure that their unmarried daughters do not use cell phones. The Indian constitution has banned caste discrimination but still it influences many aspects of life, especially marriage.
Fiat is using software that tells drivers how to make better, and more fuel efficient, choices behind the wheel.
They are among the 612 Mini E cars being trialed in the US, UK and Germany since 2009. These plug-in electric models are leased to customers, and BMW - the owner of the Mini - is monitoring every aspect of the cars' use, in almost every scenario, as they are put through their paces.The amount of data that can now be collected about how drivers use their cars is unprecedented. And the impact of so much information is potentially huge. Imagine having your car post MOT reminders to your social networks, or share your location with friends, or prove that you were not responsible for an accident.
Behaviour changing
A British company, Riversimple, has designed a range of tiny hydrogen-powered cars, which it will roll out in Leicester in 2012.They will collect every minute detail about how the cars are used. If the pilot goes well, they are already discussing ways of connecting the cars to social media, and sharing data about how the cars are used."Drivers could play games to see who is driving the most efficiently," says Rosie Reeves, Riversimple's sustainability officer.Italian carmaker Fiat has been compiling data from the Blue&Me navigation systems installed on many of its cars over a six-month period. It may be the largest such data harvest done by a major carmaker.
"We can extract a number of data - on how the pedals are used, petrol consumption, braking," says Candido Peterlini, vice president for product development at Fiat. It developed eco:Drive from the data collected from 420,000 car journeys of 5,700 drivers in five countries.
Doc Next is a special program of IDFA, featuring short documentaries by a new generation of young film talents from Europe using accessible media technologies to zoom in on their environments. For the first time, their documentaries are being shown on the big festival screen.
At the Doc Next talk show, young documentary makers take centre stage. We seize their films and stories to discuss the challenges and possibilities of user-generated media content with festival organisers, media broadcasters and documentary experts. How can do-it-yourself documentaries inspire different media domains and contribute to inclusive public opinion sharing in Europe? How can this new generation of storytellers help mainstream media to attract new audiences?
Doc Next is hosted by Leena Pasanen, executive producer at Yle Fact & Culture. Yle is Finland's national public service broadcasting company. Leena has built up a strong reputation as one of the most internationally orientated and engaged European commissioning editors, especially known for her support to new talent.Contributing guests are Doc Next’s young filmmakers Ahang Bashi (Sweden), Solomon Walter-Kelly (UK), Erhan Arik (Turkey), Vieru Dan Ilian (Romania) and media professionals Patricia Aufderheide (Professor of Film and Media Arts in the School of Communication at American University in Washington), Noel Goodwin (Youth Programmer, British Film Institute, UK), Arman Tadevosyan (Curator and initiator 5th FLOOR in Armenia), Beadie Finzi (Founding director Britdoc Channel 4, UK) and ARTE.
LocationDoc Next will take place on 20 November 2010, 14.30 – 18.00 (drinks at 16.30), in the Escape venue. Escape is situated at Rembrandtplein 11, Amsterdam.Public transportation: take tram 4, 9 or 20 from Amsterdam Central Station, get off at Rembrandtplein. If you are coming by car you can park at Stopera Parkeergarage, Waterlooplein, Amsterdam.
European Cultural Foundation and IDFA
MANY car designers are convinced that a radical change in automobile technology is going to be needed for the crowded megacities of the future. By 2030 more than 60% of the world’s population is expected to be living in cities, up from 50% now, and more of them will be able to afford cars. The need to reduce emissions, an acute scarcity of land for roads and parking, and the prospect of laws restricting conventional cars all point to the idea that different and smaller types of vehicle will be in demand. With that in mind, some of those designers are coming up with things that look a lot like a vehicle that was familiar more than 50 years ago. Welcome to the return of the bubble car.
Bubble cars were built to provide cheap personal transport. Most were two-seaters with just three wheels. They became particularly popular when fuel prices shot up in 1956, during the Suez crisis. One of the first was the Italian-made Iso Isetta. Germany was a prolific builder, too. Messerschmitt and Heinkel, forbidden to ply their former trade of building military aircraft, turned to bubble cars as a peacetime alternative. BMW, meanwhile, re-engineered the Isetta to use an engine from one of its motorcycles.
Rising incomes, falling fuel prices and changing fashions did for the original bubble cars, but the idea seems ripe for revival and three new versions, known as EN-Vs (for Electric Networked-Vehicles), are enthralling the crowds at the Expo 2010 in Shanghai. They can be driven normally or operated autonomously, with their occupants doing other things while the cars automatically avoid bumping into one another. They can also be summoned from their parking places using a mobile phone. And instead of being powered by smoky little petrol engines, they are driven electrically. What is most intriguing, however, is that they balance on just two wheels.
The three EN-Vs, each with a different body shape, were built by a partnership between General Motors (GM), an American company, and Shanghai Automotive Industry Corporation, one of China’s biggest carmakers.
As many as 8 per cent of car owners have given up driving altogether because of the expense, the survey by moneysupermarket.com found. And 57 per cent of those polled said they had reduced the amount of time spent behind the wheel.
But 30.5 per cent of the 860 people surveyed said they were sticking to their usual driving pattern, as they could just about afford to, while 4.5 per cent said they were not changing their habits at all. Steve Sweeney, head of car insurance at moneysupermarket.com said: ''We're all looking at ways to lower our everyday outgoings and getting behind the wheel is a real drain on finances. ''With recent fuel price hikes and increasing costs of car insurance, drivers are turning savvy and making changes to their usual habits to drive down costs.''
He went on: ''Cutting out driving altogether is the ultimate sacrifice to take. Shopping around for the best deal on your car insurance cover is crucial to reduce the overall costs of motoring; providers count on your apathy to reap the profits and do not reward your loyalty with a cheaper premium.
''Taking further steps like fitting an approved car alarm or immobiliser and parking in a locked garage if possible are other ways to reduce the overall cost.'
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| A Google car has even driven through the steep and curvy Lombard Street in San Francisco [GALLO/GETTY] |
Google is planning to introduce driverless cars in an ambitious project that has already seen the cars secretly driving through busy California roads, clocking a total of 1,000 miles without any human intervention.
The California-based company said on its website the cars have done more than 140,000 miles with only occasional human control.
According to an official Google blogpost by Sebastian Thrun, the company's software engineer, one car even successfully negotiated San Farncisco's Lombard Street, one of the steepest and curviest street in the US.But Thrun believes that the self-driving cars are still about eight years away from mass production.The technology developed by Google enables the automated cars to drive themselves using video cameras, radar sensors and a laser range finder to "see" other traffic, as well as detailed maps.
Self-driving cars have been around for over four decades, but a breakthrough came in 2004 when they were tested in a series of Grand Challenge events organised by the US government. Following the failure of the first contest, a Stanford team led by Thrun built the car that won a race against a vehicle built by a Carnegie Mellon University team. And within two years, another such event showed that self-driving vehicles can successfully negotiate busy urban roads.
The 'google edge'Google's street view data gives it an edge with photographs of every street in the US, UK, Ireland and many major world cities, enabling the cars to plan their routes by seeing junctions, roads well in advance, according to data from the company.
