Your Next Computer

There are 1.5 billion mobile phones in the world today. Already you can use them to browse the Web, take pictures, send e-mail and play games. Soon they could make your PC obsolete

By Brad Stone

Newsweek

June 7 issue - One hundred nineteen hours, 41 minutes and 16 seconds. That's the amount of time Adam Rappoport, a high-school senior in Philadelphia, has spent talking into his silver Verizon LG phone since he got it as a gift last Chanukah. That's not even the full extent of his habit. He also spends countless additional hours using his phone's Internet connection to check sports scores, download new ringtones (at a buck apiece) and send short messages to his friends' phones, even in the middle of class. "I know the touch-tone pad on the phone better than I know a keyboard," he says. "I'm a phone guy."

In Tokyo, halfway around the world, Satoshi Koiso also closely eyes his mobile phone. Koiso, a college junior, lives in the global capital of fancy new gadgets—20 percent of all phones in Tokyo link to the fastest mobile networks in the world. Tokyoites use their phones to watch TV, read books and magazines and play games. But Koiso also depends on his phone for something simpler and more profound: an antismoking message that pops up on his small screen each morning as part of a program to help students kick cigarettes. "Teachers struggle to stop smoking, too. You hang in there," the e-mail says one day.

Another few thousand miles away, in Frankfurt, Germany, Christoph Oswald is winding his way through his favorite nightclub, busily scanning for women who are his type: tall, slim and sporty. The 36-year-old software consultant is doing this by peering into his cell phone. Before he reaches the bar, Oswald's Nokia starts vibrating, and a video of an attractive blonde appears on the color screen. "Hi, I'm Susan, come find me!" she says. Oswald scans the crowd and picks out the blue-eyed financial adviser he'd glimpsed in the video. She has seen his picture, too. The proximity of their two phones has activated a service called Symbian Dater, which compared their profiles and decided they were compatible. Soon they are laughing, and Christoph is buying Susan drinks.

Technology revolutions come in two flavors: jarringly fast and imperceptibly slow. The fast kind, like the sudden ubiquity of iPods or the proliferation of music-sharing sites on the Net, seem to instantly reshape the cultural landscape. The slower upheavals grind away over the course of decades, subtly transforming the way we live and work. The emergence of mobile phones around the world has been slow but overwhelmingly momentous. AT&T rolled out the first cellular network in 1977 for 2,000 customers in Chicago. The phones had the approximate shape and weight of a brick.

Those phones sit in museums now, and half a billion sleeker, colorful new mobile sets are sold each year. Sales of mobile phones dwarf the sales of televisions, stereos, even the hallowed personal computer. There are 1.5 billion cell phones in the world today, more than three times the number of PCs. Mobile phones are so integral to our lives that it's difficult to remember how the heck we ever got on without them.

As our phones get smarter, smaller and faster and enable users to connect at high speeds to the Internet, an obvious question arises: is the mobile handset turning into the next computer? In one sense, it already has. Today's most sophisticated phones have the processing power of a mid-1990s PC while consuming 100 times less electricity. And more and more of today's phones have computerlike features, allowing their owners to send e-mail, browse the Web and even take photos; 84 million phones with digital cameras were shipped last year. Tweak the question, though, to ask whether mobile phones will ever eclipse, or replace, the PC, and the issue suddenly becomes controversial. PC proponents say phones are too small and connect too sluggishly to the Internet to become effective at tasks now performed on the luxuriously large screens and keyboards of today's computers. Fans of the phone respond: just wait. Coming innovations will solve the limitations of the phone. "One day, 2 or 3 billion people will have cell phones, and they are all not going to have PCs," says Jeff Hawkins, inventor of the Palm Pilot and the chief technology officer of PalmOne. "The mobile phone will become their digital life."

PalmOne is among the firms racing to trot out the full-featured computerlike phones that the industry dubs smart phones. Hawkins's newest product, the sleek, pocket-size Treo 600, has a tiny keyboard, a built-in digital camera and slots for added memory. Other device makers have introduced their own unique versions of the smart phone. Nokia's N-Gage, launched last fall, with a new version to hit stores this month, plays videogames. Motorola's upcoming MPx has a nifty "dual hinge" design: the handset opens in one direction and looks like a regular phone, but it also flips open along another axis and looks like an e-mail device, with the expanded phone keypad serving as a small qwerty keyboard. There are also smart phones on the way with video cameras, GPS antennas and access to local Wi-Fi hotspots, the superfast wireless networks often found in offices, airports and cafes. There's not yet a phone that doubles as an electric toothbrush, but that can't be far away.

The smart-phone market constitutes only a slender 5 percent of overall mobile-phone sales today, but the figure has been doubling each year, according to the Gartner research firm. In the United States, it's the business crowd that's primarily buying these souped-up handsets. "What makes [the smart phone] so much better than the computer is that it's always with you, always up and always ready," says Jeff Hackett of Gordon, Feinblatt, an 80-member law firm in Baltimore that recently started giving its lawyers Treo 600s instead of laptops.

In Asia, it's not the boring professionals driving the newest innovations in the mobile market but what the Japanese call keitai-crazy kids. Teens sit in Tokyo's crowded plazas, furiously messaging each other, reading e-mail magazines and playing fantasy games like Dragon Quest. In South Korea, phones are so cherished by youngsters that in a recent survey of elementary-school kids, half said they wanted a phone as their gift for Children's Day, a national holiday. Dogs got 22 percent of the vote, PCs a meager 10 percent. Many Asian phone manufacturers think the next killer app for all these kids is actually 75 years old: television. In May Samsung announced it would launch a phone that receives 40 satellite TV stations.

In the near future, at least, new phones won't look anything like PCs. "The industry is figuring out that a wireless handheld is a different beast," says Mark Guibert, marketing director of Research in Motion, maker of the popular BlackBerry e-mail device. Mobile-phone watchers say that handsets in the next few years will pack a gigabyte or more of flash memory, turning the phone into a huge photo album or music player and giving stand-alone iPods a run for their money. For several years the industry has also talked about "location-based services," built around a phone's ability to detect its exact location anywhere in the world. With this capability, phones will soon be able to provide precise driving directions, serve up discounts for stores as you walk by them and expand dating services like the one Christoph in Frankfurt enjoyed.

But not all mobile technologists think the ultimate promise of the mobile phone ends there. Could your phone one day actually perform many of the functions of the PC, like word processing and Web browsing? PalmOne's Hawkins thinks so. The inventor of the Palm Pilot and the Treo keeps a desktop PC and a thin Sony Vaio laptop in his office. Yet he waves at both dismissively, as if they were heading for the dustbin of history. Within the next few decades, he predicts, all phones will become mobile phones, all networks will be capable of receiving voice and Internet signals at broadband speeds, and all mobile bills will shrink to only a few dollars as the phone companies pay off their investments in the new networks. "You are going to have the equivalent of a persistent [fast] T1 line in your pocket. That's it. It's going to happen," Hawkins predicts. The computer won't go away, he says, but it might fade to the background, since people prefer portability and devices that turn on instantly instead of having to boot up.

Defenders of the PC react with religious outrage to this kind of prophecy. Laptops allow another kind of mobile computing, they point out, particularly with the emergence of thousands of Wi-Fi networks around the world over the past four years. By the end of this year half of all laptops shipped will be Wi-Fi-equipped, allowing laptop owners to set up temporary offices in the local cafe or public park. Then there's the matter of simple practicality: mobile phones are small and getting smaller. Humans are not. "Hundreds of millions of people are not going to replace the full screen, mouse and keyboard experience with staring at a little screen," says Sean Maloney, an executive VP at chipmaker Intel, which is investing heavily in both Wi-Fi and mobile-phone technology.

Yet mobile-phone innovators are working to solve that tricky problem, too. Scientists are continuing decades of research into speech-recognition systems and have recently introduced the technology into PDAs. Users can control these gadgets with simple voice commands. Phones don't have enough processing power for speech recognition yet, but Moore's Law—the inevitability of annual improvements in computing power—will help phones get there soon, provided that battery life can keep up. Other innovators are working on improving the keyboard instead of scrapping it altogether. Canesta, a five-year-old firm in San Jose, Calif., is working on a product called a "projection keyboard." A laser inside the phone emits the pattern of a large keyboard onto a flat surface, and the phone's camera perceives the user's finger movements. Canesta's first products for phones will be available as plug-ins later this year, but one day they could be cheaply integrated into handsets.

Cell phones aren't likely to take the fastest road to this bright future. Innovation in the mobile industry is full of zigzags and wrong turns, often because no single company completely controls the device in your pocket. Carriers like Sprint and AT&T sell the phone to customers, provide billing and run the phone network; device makers like Sony, Nokia and Samsung design the phone itself and outsource the actual manufacturing to factories in China. Another challenge is that, unlike the Internet, the phone world has no open and single set of protocols for programmers to build around. Software written for one kind of phone won't work on all the others. The uncoordinated, noncommercial programming that led to the quick evolution of the Internet hasn't taken hold in the world of mobile phones.

But what if you could sidestep those business barriers and, limited only by your imagination and by the feasibility of existing technology, design the Phone of the Future from scratch? NEWSWEEK wondered, and asked Frog Design, a 34-year-old Silicon Valley firm that helps build phones for companies like Motorola and Nextel, to work on the problem. Over the course of a month, four professional tech designers produced the specifications for the "petfrog," a sleek, enticing prophecy of things to come. The phone's touch screen can display any interface, from keypad to keyboard to mouse pad or game console. A second, higher-resolution screen can slide out of the unit for video chats and Web surfing. Thin, insertable cartridges can turn the phone into an MP3 player or a camera, or add extra memory or a large keyboard. "This phone will be your alter ego," says Frog founder Hartmut Esslinger.

The only drawback is that the petfrog doesn't really exist—yet. But Esslinger says it would take only two or three years to build. "The challenge is to get companies to think beyond the boundaries of their businesses," he says. Incongruously, he is demonstrating the petfrog on his ultra-thin Vaio laptop, exactly the kind of personal computer he believes we will all one day leave behind. But for now, that doesn't matter. In this vision of the next frontier, we are all phone guys.

With Emily Flynn in London, Kay Itoi in Tokyo and B. J. Lee in Seoul

URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5092826/site/newsweek/

The Ultimate Remote Control

One day, our brains might be able to beam our very thoughts wirelessly to the machines around us

By Carl Zimmer

Newsweek

June 7-14 issue - Wireless technology lets us talk on cell phones with people thousands of miles away, surf the Web without a cable and control our stereos, DVD players and televisions. But none of this technology works without pushing buttons or giving voice commands. Imagine what it would be like if we could turn our brains into remote controls, sending wireless commands to computers, robots and other machines.

It's not so farfetched. Like a computer, the brain is made up of many little units wired together to process information digitally. Where computers use zeros and ones, neurons encode our thoughts in all-or-nothing electrical impulses. And if computers and brains speak the same language, it should be possible for the two to speak to each other.

Researchers hope ultimately to eavesdrop on the brain's digital crackle with electrodes, transmit those signals to a computer that can read the brain's code and then use those signals to control a machine. Imagine a quadriplegic person able to operate a robotic arm mounted on a wheelchair with merely a thought. Imagine a digital stream flowing from a microphone into a deaf person's auditory cortex, where it could become the perception of sound.

These dreams have an official name: brain-machine interfaces. A decade ago they seemed little more than fantasy, but now their emergence seems like just a matter of time. At the Center for Neuroengineering at Duke University, monkeys with electrodes surgically implanted in their brains move robotic arms with their minds alone. The electrodes pick up signals from neurons that normally would produce hand movements, and a computer translates those instructions into commands that drive the robot. The translation happens almost instantaneously, and is sophisticated enough to allow the monkey to do more than move the arm. It can also squeeze the gripper at the end of the robotic arm as hard or as lightly as it pleases.

The Duke neuroengineers are now moving from monkeys to people. In the July 2004 issue of the Journal of Neurosurgery, they report their success at temporarily implanting their electrodes into the brains of volunteers. (The subjects were undergoing surgery for Parkinson's disease and other tremor disorders.) The patients then played videogames while the electrodes recorded the brain signals. The scientists trained a computer to recognize the brain activity corresponding to the different movements of the joystick—the first step toward translating brain commands into computer ones. Now the Duke researchers want to do long-term research on electrodes implanted in quadriplegics.

In its current form, the Duke brain-machine interface isn't pretty. Cables run out of the test subject's skull, Borg style. The design is not just ugly, but unhealthy—the opening for the wiring could let in infection. The Duke neuroengineers are hoping to make their brain-machine interface wireless: electrodes buried in the brain would relay signals to a transmitter embedded in the skull, which in turn would send them as radio waves to a receiver attached to the scalp. The receiver would then pass the signals to a miniature computer a person might wear on his or her belt. The device would wirelessly send commands to a robotic arm or some other machine.

If you don't need a cable to transmit signals from your brain, then you aren't limited by a cable's reach, either. You could send those signals through the Internet to a machine thousands of miles away. You could uplink them through a satellite to a rover prowling around on Mars. Consider the possibility of electrodes implanted in the language centers of the brain, wirelessly transmitting your inner voice thousands of miles away. You might choose instead to send them to someone standing nearby with electrodes implanted in his or her hearing centers. Telepathy, anyone? Or, if you take a bleaker view of the future, mind control?

Huge hurdles remain between today's state-of-the-art and these possibilities. The fact that scientists can decode hand-moving brain signals is no guarantee that other signals—incoming touch or outgoing speech, for example—will be as easy to master. Basic hardware challenges, such as getting more power to the internal transmitters, have yet to be solved. And making brains Wi-Fi will still involve surgery, unless someone can figure out how to monitor neurons from the outside. On the other hand, few would have imagined a decade ago that monkeys would now be running robots with their minds. When it comes to Wi-Fi, it may not be wise to bet against the future.

URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5093199/site/newsweek/

Reinventing the Foot Soldier

The American military wants to bring a vast range of battlefield knowledge down to the grunts on the ground

By Adam Piore

Newsweek

June 7-14 issue - Iraqi soldiers had a name for America's fleet of M1 Abrams tanks—they called them "whispering death." That's because the M1 can obliterate the kind of Soviet-era tanks employed by the former Iraqi Army before a crew even knows it's coming. It's not just that these 63-ton killing machines have heat-sensitive thermal imaging that allows U.S. soldiers to see tanks hiding behind sand dunes at night in any weather, or that its weapons have a 1,000-meter advantage in range. The M1's superiority has as much to do with a revolution in wireless technology that's transformed the way U.S. forces manage their operations on the battlefield. Using GPS navigation, American tanks roam the desert without fear of getting lost. Low-flying drones transmit real-time video from the battlefield back to headquarters, where commanders help tank crews prepare for what lies ahead. This technological advantage is one reason why the initial U.S. invasion of Iraq was so quick and deadly.

It also helps explain why American forces have had such trouble fighting the ensuing insurgency, when soldiers have had to get out of their tanks and go after enemy fighters on foot. That's raised one of the most pressing problems facing the U.S. military: how to bring the benefits of the wireless revolution down to the individual foot soldier. The Pentagon has scores of new projects in testing and development aimed at doing just that. Their goal is to endow the grunt with the ability to see enemy soldiers before he emerges from the protection of his armored vehicle. On the streets, he'll have access to real-time video of what lies ahead, controlling perspective and location with a joystick that can manipulate a "virtual" image of himself across a portable video screen attached to his helmet. "Think about what you could do differently if you knew that an adversary was waiting around a corner," Jeffrey Paul, of the Pentagon's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), told a crowd of scientists and defense contractors recently. "You could decide whether to prepare for combat, signal others to surprise him or choose a different route. That advance knowledge is what we must give our war fighters."

To do this, the military will need to continue making significant strides in the amount of real-time, actionable data it can collect from the battlefield. In the second gulf war Americans used a crude new tracking system that allowed tank commanders to identify one another by locating them on a real-time graphical display of the battlefield. The advance cut down significantly on friendly fire incidents. But the ultimate goal is much more ambitious. Pentagon planners see a day when they can blanket battlefields with so many wireless sensors that even the smallest targets in the most complex urban or jungle environments will be unable to change position without being observed. "This means there will always be an appropriate sensor staring in our opponent's face no matter where they move," explained Paul.

Some promising projects are already in testing. DARPA recently demonstrated the ability to pick out vehicles parked behind a dense tree line, using advanced radar. Eventually a new kind of radar that employs lasers to produce real-time 3-D holograms will be added to the system. The sensors could be attached to wireless drones, which would prowl battlefields sending images from alleyways, the streets, even through windows. Finding ways to track enemies into underground facilities and buildings is tougher—but not impossible. In the wake of Tora Bora, the U.S. military began pouring money into sensors that are ultrasensitive to sound, seismic vibrations caused by activity underground and electromagnetic impulses.

Processing all this new data presents challenges of its own. Already, supercomputers are capable of combining information from satellite, radar data and drones into a unified image. Doing so with the specificity a foot soldier would require, though, is another thing altogether. "If you have a lot of sensor data on a ship, you end up with a lot of people doing that processing," says Larry Jackel, a DARPA program manager. "If the poor guy is a dismount, he's got to do it all. You got your hands full dodging bullets. You don't want to have your headgear feed you all sorts of data... unless it's going to tell you a lot about exactly what's on the other side of that hill." Jackel and his staff are developing computer programs that use artificial-intelligence systems to filter out unnecessary data. But he is years away from a finished product.

For now, there isn't nearly enough bandwidth to transmit the data to American foot soldiers anyway. DARPA wants to develop a huge blimp with an internal antenna the length of the Statue of Liberty that would hover 21,000 meters above a battlefield, collecting and beaming data among sensors, soldiers and headquarters. Researchers have only begun to study the most basic questions, like how to dramatically reduce antenna weight and how to keep the myriad electronic components calibrated to one another over time.

Power supply also remains an issue. The average soldier already carries about 22 batteries. Purush Chalilpoyil, a former manager of research at Duracell, estimates that battery capacity has tripled in the past decade. But future hopes rest on fuel-cell technologies that are lightweight but still in development.

Many other challenges remain. Iraq was able to obtain Russian-made radar jamming equipment capable of disrupting American signals; DARPA is experimenting with ways to divert such devices with decoy signals. Still, the four pillars of knowledge every soldier needs haven't changed—where he is, where his buddies are, where the enemy is and what the commander wants him to do. Any advances in the technology used to deliver that kind of information are sure to revolutionize the way war is fought.

URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5093192/site/newsweek/

Nowhere To Hide: The Battle For Fallujah

High above Iraq's urban battlefields, tiny, remote-control spy planes-streaming video 24/7-provide a crucial edge to coalition forces. A report from the battle for Fallujah.

By Bing West
Photographs by Lucian Read

Published in the February 2005 issue.

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In a small tent on the outskirts of Fallujah, a dozen Marines in a unit known as the Watchdogs crowd around a pair of 26-in. monitors that show the same nighttime scene.

"There goes a mongoose kid," says Lt. Col. John "Ajax" Neumann, commanding officer and mission commander. "Stay with him."

Cpl. Phillip Saliba adjusts the zoom lens of an infrared camera on the underside of a remotely piloted aircraft circling 3000 ft. above the Iraqi city. Even from that height, the black-and-white video feed clearly shows a cyclist hunched over the handlebars, feet pumping furiously, tires kicking up a rooster tail of dust. To the Watchdogs, the rider looks like a mongoose scurrying across a field.

"He's heading for the safe house," Saliba says.

In the monochrome of the plane's camera, Fallujah is as bright as day, yet dingy and depressing--block after desolate block of courtyard walls, squat buildings and empty streets. The cyclist swerves left and disappears under a tin roof.

"We've already marked that location," Neumann says. In the four months that the Watchdogs have kept Fallujah under surveillance with Pioneer Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), they have pinpointed more than 100 safe houses used by insurgents and the mujahedeen--"muj" to the Marines. The bike riders are sentries.

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"He's probably going off watch," Neumann says.

High above, the UAV holds station, turning in lazy circles, the camera locked on the safe house, where an armed guard stands watch on a patio. A few minutes later, a pickup barrels down the street. The driver brakes in front of the safe house and backs under the tin roof.

"They think if they drive fast, we might not see them," a Marine says. "With all the dust they kick up, how could we miss them?"

"Call for a fire mission?" asks Lt. J.D. Parchman, the intelligence section watch officer. "We got a positive ID on weapons. Clear violation. Has to be muj."

"Negative," Neumann says. "It's almost H-hour, and we're supporting the opening raid. Push north to the hospital."

H-hour--19:00, Sunday, Nov. 7, 2004, the launch of Operation al-Fajr (the Dawn). After eight months of vacillation and negotiation by the Iraqi and U.S. governments, 10,000 U.S. Marines and soldiers, along with 2000 Iraqi soldiers, are about to kick off a campaign to regain control of Fallujah, the strong point of the Sunni insurgency just west of Baghdad and the sanctuary of the Jordanian terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. An estimated 70 percent of the 300,000 residents have fled; the 4000 insurgents who remain vow to fight to the death. American and Iraqi troops need to clear them out with minimum casualties to Multi-National Forces, Iraqi Security Forces and civilians. That means detecting where the enemy is hiding, and in what strength.

For such precise intelligence, the Americans turn to units like the Watchdogs of Marine Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Squadron VMU-1 and their Pioneer UAVs. "Those muj are out there to kill our soldiers and Marines," Neumann says. "We're here to find them so our shooters kill them first."

The UAV deployment is part of the American military's increasing reliance on unmanned technology. In Iraq, this dominance of the robotic battlefield has helped limit both coalition and civilian casualties. Radio-controlled robots are used to detonate homemade bombs; tethered blimps are common at bases. About 10 types of UAVs patrol the skies, providing real-time surveillance and battle damage assessment to troops on the ground.

The 14-ft.-long Pioneer RQ-2B, which proved its worth in 1991 during Desert Storm, looks like a boxy model aircraft you might buy at Radio Shack, assemble in the garage, and fly in the nearest park for a day of fun with the kids. With radio-controlled landings and takeoffs, just like a model aircraft, the Pioneer can loiter over targets for more than 5 hours. Circling at less than 100 mph, it provides a steady platform for a daytime optical camera and a nighttime Forward-Looking Infrared camera.

Four months before Operation al-Fajr, the Watchdogs pitched their operations tent next to a runway about 12 miles west of Fallujah and started sending up four Pioneers a day on hundreds of sorties. Whenever insurgents came out of doors, the UAVs tracked them--day after day, night after night. The Watchdogs followed one pickup from a mosque to a highway beyond the city limits, where three men with their arms bound were pushed into a ditch and shot. The pickup was then driven back into town and parked in front of a safe house. The Watchdogs tagged it for later bombing.

Several times the Watchdogs monitoring the Pioneer's video feed saw pickups swerve into empty lots. The occupants would jump out, fire a few rockets and scurry off before a response attack could be launched. "We followed one pickup after it fired some rockets," says Staff Sgt. Francisco Tataje, the intelligence chief. "It swung up onto the main highway, and we had it intercepted. The driver had a perfect ID. No incriminating stuff. We gave the interrogation team a copy of our video. They called back later to say the guy confessed."

The conflict in Iraq has proved that UAVs can do more than collect data. And, with Operation al-Fajr ready to roll, the Watchdogs' billet has been expanded to include target acquisition and strike coordination. By making airborne robotic technology a common and useful battlefield tool at the lowest tactical level--regiments and battalions--the Watchdogs and similar units in Iraq have opened a new dimension in warfare.

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When Neumann's crew tracks a promising target, it sends a "story board"--a PowerPoint presentation with text, and digital photos, maps and video streams--to one of the regiments or brigades the Watchdogs support. The data also goes to the Tactical Fusion Center on the west side of town, which collects information from UAVs, companies on the front lines, electronic intercepts, agent reports and other intel. The Tactical Fusion Center then sends the information to regimental or battalion combat teams, which determine target priorities. The combat teams' Fires Sections assign the shooters--artillery, AC-130 Spectre gunships, strike aircraft or even Hellfire missile-equipped Predator UAVs.

As the six battalions taking part in Operation al-Fajr roll into town from the northern outskirts, the Pioneer flies to the Fallujah General Hospital, located on the west bank of the Euphrates at a great bend in the river. The Watchdogs study the twin monitors' high-contrast images, which show a line of white ghosts snaking around palm trees in the hospital courtyard and winding up onto the roof.

"Those guys are wearing packs," Neumann says. "They're friendlies. It's the Iraqi Commando Forces."

"Concur," says watch officer Parchman. "They're too disciplined to be muj."

Outside the hospital, armored cars kick up dust, their warm engines visible through the hoods as glowing white dots. The Marine 3rd Light Armored Reconnaissance (LAR) battalion is moving into position to cover the Iraqi raiders.

Lance Cpl. Robert Daniels reads a secure chat-room message that pops up on his screen. "LAR wants us to sweep across the river," he says. "Someone's firing."

"Take us east," Neumann tells the UAV pilot. "Shift from white-hot to black-hot."

The pilot takes the Pioneer across the Euphrates, while his partner tightens the camera's zoom and switches to display a negative image: Now heat-generating objects show up on the monitors as black images instead of white ones. The screen image jumps slightly and then comes into focus: two black spots moving behind an earthen berm.

"I confirm weapons," says Sgt. Jennifer Forman, an imagery analyst. "Watch their right arms when they run. They're shooting across the river."

Just as the black spots bob together, the screen suddenly blooms black, then settles back into focus, showing a thick gray cloud and a scattering of small black spots, like someone in the cloud has thrown out a handful of rocks.

"Tank gun got them," Neumann says. "Picked them up from their thermals. They're scratched. Scan up the street."

The Pioneer's camera tracks up a wide, empty boulevard bordered by ramshackle warehouses, tin-roof repair shops and dingy apartment buildings. A few hundred meters from the Highway 10 bridge over the Euphrates, four dark spots are splayed against one corner of a large building, with three similar spots at the other corner.

"One's lying down," Neumann says. "They're manning a crew-served weapon pointed at the bridge. Tell Regimental Combat Team-1 we have targets for Basher."

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STREET LETHAL: Marines patrol Fallujah during Operation al-Fajr. UAVs overhead provide troops with live intel.');">
STREET LETHAL: Marines patrol Fallujah during Operation al-Fajr. UAVs overhead provide troops with live intel.');">Click to enlarge
STREET LETHAL: Marines patrol Fallujah during Operation al-Fajr. UAVs overhead provide troops with live intel.

The combat team agrees with Neumann's assessment that it's a job for Basher, the four-engine Air Force AC-130 circling above the city. With its 105mm howitzer cannon, 40mm cannons and 20mm rotary cannons, the gunship is a flying artillery platform. Daniels types in a grid location for the building, accurate within a few meters. Regiment sends a one-line response: Basher on the way.

A minute goes by. The four dark spots crouch in the shadows. On the screen a black ball hits the edge of the building; black chunks go flying. Another black ball hits the target, and then another and another, enveloping the spots. Using an infrared spotlight to illuminate the insurgents, Basher's pilot is pounding away with 105mm artillery shells. Gray smoke rises from the scene.

"Watch for leakers," Neumann says. "There's one now, heading north. Stay with him."

A black spot breaks out of the smoke. Against the background of the macadam on the street, the man's silhouette stands out plainly. He runs with the speed of a sprinter.

"Ten to one he's headed for the mosque up the street," Neumann says.

Parchman watches the runner climb a wall. "He made it. Can't hit him there."

While Basher moves on to another target, the Pioneer circles to assess damage to the building. A large door in the rear slides open, and two men run around the side of the building. They quickly return, dragging a body. The Marines watch as the scene is repeated several times.

"Are they carrying a heavy weapon or a body part?" a Marine asks.

"Don't know," Parchman says. "We confirm four down. Mark this as a safe house. We'll come back later for a relook."

The next day, with Maj. Kelly "Maddog" Ramshur on watch as mission commander, the Pioneer circles al Shu-hada, a district the Marines have dubbed Queens. The lair of criminal gangs, terrorists and jihadists, Queens is a warren of drab concrete houses lining dirt roads, with scant vegetation. For most of the day, the Watchdogs see few lucrative targets. In midafternoon, though, the Pioneer's camera records a series of red flashes from a courtyard, which instantly catches the Marines' attention.

The half-completed building looks like a small soccer stadium, with a wall several stories high enclosing an oval courtyard. A single mortar tube in the courtyard points north toward Camp Fallujah, the sprawling command and logistics hub of the coalition operation. Every 10 minutes or so, three insurgents sprint from a house a few hundred meters north of the building and disappear under the eaves of the courtyard wall. A few minutes later, they dash into the courtyard. Each man drops a round down the tube and sprints back to the house. The mortar attack breaks the usual shoot-and-scoot pattern seen during the Fallujah engagement. This mortar crew is staying and fighting.

After six rounds explode around Camp Fallujah, Ramshur takes a phone call from the Army 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 1st Cavalry Division--the Blackjack Brigade.

"Air's not available," Ramshur says to his crew. "Arty has the target."

The Marines murmur. Artillery is an area-fire weapon, not a precision instrument. But it is all that is immediately available.

Saliba places the crosshairs of the Pioneer's optical camera on the mortar tube and reads off the 10-digit grid on the screen. The coordinates are sent to the Tactical Fusion Center and the Blackjack Brigade.

After several minutes, Ramshur finally says, "Shot out."

The Marines crane forward to watch the explosion from a 155mm artillery shell fired from nearly 3 miles away. When a large gray puff pops up a football field away from the tube, the crew measures the miss distance and types in: Add one hundred, right fifty. That is, fire the shell 100 meters farther and 50 meters to the right.

Several minutes later, a large cloud of dirt erupts inside the courtyard. The crew's next command: Fire for effect.

A few minutes later, two bright orange flashes light up the courtyard, with a third about 100 meters to the south. When the smoke clears, the tube is still standing. The next volley delivers the same result--close but not effective. No secondary explosions. No visible damage to the tube.

During the ensuing lull, the three insurgents run from the safe house, pick up three mortar rounds, drop them down the tube and run back to the house.

"You wouldn't catch me playing dodge with 155s," one of the Watchdogs says.

Ramshur calls the Blackjack Brigade Intelligence Center, then tells his crew, "We're getting Predator."

Launched from a site near Baghdad, the Predator is 13 ft. longer than the Pioneer and packs a Hellfire missile with an 18-pound warhead. The most remarkable aspect of the Predator deployment is that a crew at Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada--7500 miles away--is guiding the UAV. A few weeks earlier, the Watchdogs helped a Predator destroy a moving pickup with a mounted machine gun--one robot leading another robot to the target.

"Break, break," Ramshur says. "Predator's been diverted. Anvil has the mission. Stand by for talk on."

Anvil is the call sign for a flight of two Marine AV-8B Harrier jets flying at 19,000 ft. Meanwhile, the insurgents make another round trip sprint. Twelve rounds have been launched at Camp Fallujah--each one with the potential to add to coalition casualties. The brass wants the duel to end.

"What do you think, guys?" asks Ramshur. "The tube or the house?"

DRONE ZONE
About 10 types of unmanned planes provide live camera feeds to U.S. combat operations centers. Models shown here are examples of the three major types of aeronautical robots in America's growing fleet.
Predator WINGSPAN: 49 ft. OPERATING ALT. : 16,000 ft. HANG TIME: 40 hours WEAPONS: Two Hellfire-C laser-guided antitank missiles MISSION: High-risk, medium-altitude surveillance; some strike capability against ground targets. ESTIMATED COST: $3 million
Global Hawk WINGSPAN: 116 ft. 2 in. OPERATING ALT. : 65,000 ft. + HANG TIME: 36 hours WEAPONS: Unarmed MISSION: Long-range, high-altitude target surveillance. ESTIMATED COST: $10 million +
Raven WINGSPAN: 4 ft. 2 in. OPERATING ALT. : 100 to 500 ft. HANG TIME: 80 minutes WEAPONS: Unarmed MISSION: Low-altitude surveillance at platoon level. ESTIMATED COST: $40,000

"House!" chorus the Marines.

The house where the insurgents are hiding between rounds has a dome roof, a walled courtyard and an overhang at the front door, where a sentry is posted. Once the Harriers close in, Ramshur radios the details of the house's location to a Forward Air Controller, who lines up the jets.

"The house is the first one north of the vacant lot on the northeast corner," Ramshur says. "Has a dome roof. Wait--it's where that truck is. Got it?"

A truck pulls up to the house and five men walk inside, carrying something in their arms.

"Supper time," says Sgt. Roneil Sampson, an imagery analyst. "They're changing shifts. Domino's delivery."

Ramshur reads a secure text message: Air is cleared hot.

Impact is less than a minute away. The courtyard door opens. A man walks to the truck and slowly drives off.

"Boot muj sent out to get the Coke," says one Marine. "Luckiest bastard on the planet." Both video screens flash bright white, as if a fuse has blown. When the picture comes back into focus, the Marines see that the center of the roof is now a huge black hole.

"Now that's what I call a shack," Ramshur says. "Great job, Watchdogs. Great job."

Operation al-Fajr continued for another 11 days--sector by sector, block by block, house by house--until the Multi-National Forces had secured most of the city. The death toll: 38 U.S. troops, six Iraqi troops and an estimated 1200 insurgents. By mid-December exiled residents began to return to their homes.

A former Marine and assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs, Bing West is the author of three books. In May, Bantam Books will publish his fourth volume, No True Glory: Fallujah And The Struggle In Iraq--A Frontline Account. Portions of this article originally appeared in West's online diary at www.slate.com.

The Future of Shopping

Tiny silicon identity chips being put in everyday objects and even implanted under the skin are changing the way we consume. Will they also invade our privacy?

By Rana Foroohar

Newsweek

June 7-14 issue - Antoine Hazelaar has a chip on his shoulder—or rather just beneath the skin of his left arm. It's a piece of silicon the size of a grain of rice, and it emits wireless signals that are picked up by scanners nearby. Ever since the 34-year-old Web-site producer had the chip implanted in his arm, he's enjoyed VIP status at Barcelona's Baja Beach Club. Instead of queuing up behind velvet ropes, Hazelaar allows the bouncer to scan his arm, and strolls right in. If he wants a drink, the bartender waves an electronic wand that deducts from the 100 Euro tab on Hazelaar's chip.

Such sci-fi clubbing is made possible by Radio Frequency Identification, or RFID, technology—tiny digital chips that broadcast wireless signals. RFID tags are cheap and small enough to be disposable, and they're getting cheaper and smaller by the day. Retail stores are beginning to use them as glorified bar codes, putting them on cases of bananas or crates of Coke so they can keep track of their inventory. The technology has the potential to transform our relationship to the objects around us. In theory, stores could dispense with checkout counters—instead, you'd grab items off the rack or shelves and walk out the door, while an RFID reader takes note of the items and takes the money right out of your e-wallet. Your clothes could tell your washing machine what settings to use. "RFID could help give inanimate objects the power to sense, reason, communicate and even act," says Glover Ferguson, chief scientist for the consulting firm Accenture. The prospect is exciting, but it raises troubling questions about the invasion of privacy.

For now, businesses see it as a way to save money and improve service. Big groceries, department stores and other retailers around the world are asking suppliers to put RFID tags on shipments of goods. Staff will know exactly where items are and when they came in. Customers will never have to leave the store empty-handed because items will never run out—wireless signals will alert staffers to dwindling supplies of diapers or soup. What's more, RFID will help combat theft and counterfeiting, problems that cost businesses $500 billion a year.

For some retailers, RFID is a way to provide a more seamless shopping experience. British retail giant Marks &Spencer is currently tagging men's suits in several London stores as part of a test. When you buy a size 42, the stockroom—alerted by the tag——sends up another. Metro's Future Store in Rheinberg, Germany, is putting tags on individual items. Better not steal a razor—its RFID tag will warn security. Pick up a bottle of Pantene shampoo, and a promotional film plays on a nearby screen. The cream cheese can tell staffers when it's gone off. Wincor Nixdorf and Texas Instruments are developing a system that suggests accessories to clothing items. In Prada's New York store, if you hold a dress near a monitor, you'll see models wearing it on a runway.

As the Baja Beach Club trial shows, RFID can tag people as well as goods. Some hospitals are using RFID bracelets on newborn babies and elderly patients with dementia. Children in one Japanese cram school wave RFID cards to alert their parents that they've arrived. Amusement parks in the United States are issuing RFID badges that light up to let people know when it's their turn on the roller coaster.

Privacy implications remain a big obstacle. The fear is that companies or governments could use the tags as a means of surveillance. "Supermarket cards and retail surveillance devices are merely the opening volley," says Katherine Albrecht, founder of the U.S.- based privacy group caspian. "If consumers fail to oppose these practices now, our long-term prospects may look like something from a dystopian science-fiction novel." Proponents counter that RFID tags transmit for only a few meters, and the data can be encrypted or deactivated once a product leaves the store. Nevertheless, caspian and other watchdog groups have won concessions from retailers. Wal-Mart and Benetton will only use the tags on pallets, not on individual items, and Metro has gotten rid of RFID-enabled loyalty cards. Utah now requires clear labeling of an RFID-tagged product; a bill in California would ban retailers from using RFID to collect information about consumers.

In any case, ubiquitous chipping is years away. The cost of RFID tags will have to drop from 20 cents each to five cents or less if they're to grace trillions of consumer items. Also, the signal doesn't pass through liquid or metal, which makes it tough to tag a can of soda or a nine-volt battery. And people may not like the idea of being surrounded by tiny transmitters sending out electromagnetic radiation. Undaunted, RFID chipmaker VeriChip is looking for big banks and credit-card firms interested in offering RFID-based e-wallets. If successful, they would truly give shouldering up to the bar for a drink a whole new meaning.

With Jonathan Adams in New York and Kay Itoi in Tokyo

URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5093197/site/newsweek/

A Future With Nowhere to Hide?

Tracking turns the freedom of mobile telephony upside down

By Steven Levy

Newsweek

June 7-14 issue - We're all too familiar with the concept of technology as a double-edged sword, and wireless is no exception. In fact, the back edge of this rapier is sharp enough to draw blood. Yes, the idea of shedding wires and cables is exhilarating: we can go anywhere and still maintain intimate contact with our work, our loved ones and our real-time sports scores. But the same persistent connectedness may well lead us toward a future in which our cell phones tag and track us like FedEx packages,

Sometimes when we're not aware.

To see how this might work, check out Worktrack, a product from the Mountain View, California, "mobile services" company Aligo. The system is sold to employers who want to automate and verify digital time logs on their workers in the field. The first customers are in the heating and air-conditioning business. Workers have GPS-equipped cell phones that pinpoint their locations to computers in the back office. Their peregrinations can be checked against the "Geo Fence" their employers draw up, circumscribing the area where their work is situated. (This sounds uncomfortably like the pet-control technology, those "invisible fences" that give Rover a good stiff shock if he ventures beyond the backyard.)

"It they're not in the right area, they're really not working," says Aligo CEO Robert Smith. "A notification will come to the back office that they're not where they should be." The system also tracks how fast the workers drive, so the employer can verify to insurance companies that no one is speeding. All of this is perfectly legal, of course, as employers have the right to monitor their workers. Smith says that workers like the technology because it ensures that they get credit for the time they spend on the job.

Worktrack is only one of a number of services devoted to tracking humans. Parents use similar schemes to make sure their kids are safe, and many drivers are already allowing safety monitors to keep GPS tabs on their travels (OnStar, anyone?). Look for the practice to really explode as mobile-phone makers continue to incorporate GPS in their handsets. The U.S. government requires all cell phones to have GPS that can pinpoint the owner's location by the end of 2005, and other countries may follow suit.

The prospect of being tracked "turns the freedom of mobile telephony upside down," says Marc Rotenberg of the Electronic Privacy Information Center. His concern is government surveillance and the storage of one's movements in databases. In fact, if information from the GPS signals is retained, it would be trivial to retain a log of an individual's movements over a period of years (just as phone records are kept). An even darker view is proposed by two academics who wrote a paper warning of the advent of "geoslavery." Its definition: "a practice in which one entity, the master, coercively or surreptitiously monitors and exerts control over the physical location of another individual to routinely control time, location, speed and direction for each and every movement of the slave."

My guess is that the widespread adoption of tracking will be done not against our will but initially with our consent. As with other double-edged tools, the benefits will be immediately apparent, while the privacy drawbacks will emerge gradually. The first attraction will be based on fear: in addition to employers' keeping workers in line, Mom and Dad will insist that their teenagers have GPS devices in order to be able to follow them throughout their day, a human equivalent of the LoJack system to find stolen cars. The second stage will come as location-based services, from navigation to "friend finding" (some systems tell you when online buddies are in shouting range), make our lives more efficient and pleasurable.

Sooner or later, though, it will dawn on us that information drawn from our movements has compromised our "locational privacy"—a term that may become familiar only when the quality it refers to is lost. "I don't see much that will bring about [protections] in the short term," says Mark Monmonier, author of "Spying With Maps." He thinks that we'll get serious about this only after we suffer some egregious privacy violations. But if nothing is done, pursuing our love affair with wireless will result in the loss of a hitherto unheralded freedom—the license to get lost. Here's a new battle cry for the wireless era: Don't Geo-Fence me in.

URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5093170/site/newsweek/

Wireless in the World

Wi-Fi technology is a luxury in some places, a weapon in others--and the only way to communicate for some. Here are 10 cities on the front lines of a revolution.

Newsweek International

June 7-14 issue - Keeping Watch
London, England
Population: 7.4 million
Why: Crimefighting enters the wireless era
Fact: Soon, cops will watch over their entire stomping grounds on laptops and PDAs

Police Sgt. John Baldock had spent many evenings staking out the door-way of the family-run Italian eatery Rosticceria Rusticana, where drug dealers plied their trade away from the surveillance cameras that dot London's trendy-cum-seedy Soho neighborhood. His big break came when Westminster's nerdy information-network manager, Andrew Snellgrove, stuck a tiny wireless camera in a lamppost across the street. A week later, Baldock had all the evidence he needed to arrest several dealers.

Police are about to turn Soho into the first wireless law-enforcement district. In the next six months, Snellgrove will install 50 wireless cameras and sensors around the neighborhood. They'll take real-time videos good enough to be admissible in court, and sensors will monitor unusual noises. Because the cameras won't be fixed, police will be able to move them constantly, creating the impression of total surveillance. Crooks, beware.

—Emily Flynn

Biggest Network
Seoul, South Korea
Population: 10.3 mil.
Why: Holds 20% of the world's Wi-Fi hotspots
Fact: Roughly half of all Internet usage in South Korea is conducted via wireless connections

Lee Hye Ryung's life revolves around the wireless Internet. During her 45-minute morning subway commute to school, the graduate student at Yonsei University in Seoul chats with her friends or plays online games through her PDA phone. She brings her laptop to every class and takes notes, searches the Internet and makes presentations with it—using Wi-Fi hotspots sprinkled around campus. The computer even comes with her on geology field trips to the remote countryside. "I have access to the Internet almost any time, anywhere," she says. "I feel insecure when I am not connected."

Lee isn't the only Seoul resident who's always online. The South Korean capital has the most extensive wireless-broadband network in the world, with more than 400,000 Wi-Fi subscribers. Wi-Fi is available in airports, hotels, government offices, libraries, banks and fast-food restaurants.

Korea Telecom started its mobile-broadband service two years ago. Its latest offering, Nespot Swing, combines conventional mobile-phone service with mobile-broadband Internet. A $500 PDA phone built specially for the service puts a 5-megabits-per-second Wi-Fi connection at your disposal. With its built-in camcorder, you can also take still or video pictures and upload them immediately to your blog. KT plans to raise the number of Wi-Fi hotspots from 13,000 to 23,000 in South Korea, with nearly half of them in the capital. "In major areas of Seoul, mobile Internet zones will be within three minutes' walk from any place," says KT vice president Hahn Won Sic.

If Wi-Fi technology is ever going to catch on to the extent that mobile phones have, though, service providers will need to find a way to appeal to adults—most users are students, who can't afford to pay much for the service. Or they can wait: the kids at Yonsei University are not getting any younger.

—B.J. Lee

Gratis in Gotham
New York, United States
Population: 8.2 mil.
Why: Heart of the rebel Wi-Fi movement
Fact: 500 public pay phones are being converted into hotspots for wireless users

The Big Apple now blasts Internet connectivity into the air along with taxi exhaust, the smell of honeyed peanuts from sidewalk vendors and the blare of honking horns. Some of it is official: traffic police in the borough of Queens ticket cars with handheld bar-code scanners from Symbol Technologies. Carried by cops, the scanners are linked via Wi-Fi to portable printers and also transmit the tickets back to central computers. The city says it's saving millions a year with just 1,000 of the $2,100 devices by reducing errors, and it will order 500 more this year. There are also 112 Starbucks coffee shops, 60 McDonald's restaurants and thousands of hotels all offering subscription access to Wi-Fi networks.

But New York is also one of the best places in the world to log on to free hotspots. Free networks cover the Columbia University campus, Bryant Park, Union Square and the Chelsea Piers Sports Complex on the West Side of Manhattan. Grass-roots groups are trying to cover their neighborhoods in free connectivity. One group, Evill Net, stitched together a free network that works from rooftops in the East Village. Since May 2003 another, the Downtown Alliance, has connected eight parks and open spaces in lower Manhattan, near the former site of the World Trade Center. It is now one of the most heavi-ly used Wi-Fi networks in the world. Who said nothing in New York was free?

—Brad Stone

Freedom in the Airwaves
Tallinn, Estonia
Population: 397,150
Why: Wireless bolsters a fledgling democracy
Fact: In 2000 Tallinn had only three Wi-Fi hotspots. Today there are more than 300.

The grim decades of Soviet rule in Estonia gave the Cafe Pegasus, an austere '60s building just inside Tallinn's towering medieval walls, a reputation as a clandestine meeting spot for writers and intellectuals. "This was a place where you spoke about things you wouldn't speak about anywhere else," says owner Mart Tomson.

How times change. These days Estonia is open and democratic, and the patrons of hyperchic Pegasus, like the rest of Tallinn, now embrace wireless technology almost as a democratic right. Thanks to a blend of private enterprise and government benevolence, Pegasus is among scores of Tallinn venues to boast free Wi-Fi access.

Estonians see a link between easy—or free—access to information and their new democracy. Back in 1991, when the country won its independence, a forward-thinking government looked to IT and the Internet as central pillars of its future economy. At relatively little cost, Estonia leapfrogged into a place among Europe's cyberelite.

Since then wireless has taken hold as nowhere else in Europe. Three of four people have a cell phone, and they can use it to pay for anything from a glass of beer to space in a parking lot (which, by the way, will call when your time is nearly up). Government ministers conduct weekly cabinet sessions online.

The key to the success of wireless has as much to do with a hands-off approach as with deliberate strategy. From the start, an independent Estonia pursued a ruthless free-market line: no state monopoly for telecoms, minimal regulation and healthy competition among commercial players. "The government sees no need to regulate," says Tex Vertmann, an IT adviser to Prime Minister Juhan Parts. In Estonia cyberspace belongs to all. That's democracy.

—William Underhill

Only Way to Communicate
Baghdad, Iraq
Population: 5.8 mil.
Why: The only way to stay connected
Fact: Only one third of Iraq's prewar phone lines are now in service, and they are unreliable

Twenty-two-year-old Hasanen Nawfal studies computer science at a private college in Baghdad, but he may be learning more on the streets. He and his buddies honed their computer skills looking for ways to circumvent the censorship of Saddam Hussein. When most Web services were banned, they accessed the Internet by hacking into the government network. Now they've picked up a new hobby: "war driving," or stealing other people's wireless bandwidth while driving past with a laptop. The practice has become popular among Baghdad's increasingly high-tech denizens. "Hijacking wireless networks has become a bad habit for us," says Nawfal. "All you need is to be about 100 meters away from the target access point," he says. "Then you sniff and decode the packets."

Baghdad's worsening security has crippled efforts to reconstruct fixed-line telephone networks—only about a third of the million or so lines have been restored—to say nothing of complicated fiber and cable systems. Cell phones and to a lesser extent Wi-Fi have become indispensable tools for thousands of Iraqis, journalists and U.S. officials. Although Baghdad doesn't have the Wi-Fi hotspots of San Francisco or Seoul, it is arguably the most wireless-dependent city on the planet.

Independent Iraqi entrepreneurs do a brisk business providing Wi-Fi to Iraqi and foreign customers. More than 35 companies sent in over 100 bids for rights to construct the country's future commercial-telecom industry, including what analysts believe will be a huge wireless component. The technology has already caught on with people who have had hard times with cable connections. "We used to have a DSL line that would go down for days at a time," says Adam Davidson, a correspondent for U.S. public radio. He switched to wireless. Soon his house's six tenants were surfing the Net on Wi-Fi, beamed to a receiver connected to a satellite dish on the provider's roof.

Although analysts say that the market for cell phones and Wi-Fi could reach $1.2 billion by 2008, commercial services haven't taken hold. That doesn't mean there's no innovation. The U.S. military is working up emergency networks for Baghdad's police and firefighters. After all, Baghdad is already a hotspot as it is.

—Scott Johnson

The Humblest Digital City
Pirai, Brazil
Population: 23,600
Why: For connecting the once remote
Fact: In one month this rural town in a low-tech country built itself a wireless network

You won't find Pirai in a Fodor's guide. Nor is this poky town of 23,600 inhabitants, whose renown peaked during the 19th-century Brazilian coffee boom, exactly the nerve center of Latin American high technology. But if it were up to Mayor Luiz Fernando de Souza, known to all as Pezo, or Bigfoot in Portuguese, all this will change. Late last year, on the eve of his eighth and final year in office, Souza launched his most ambitious plan ever. He vowed to outfit all municipal facilities, from the town hall to the public schools, with broadband, wireless Internet access.

It sounded quixotic at best. Only a fraction of Brazilians had Internet access of any kind. Even now, just 6 percent of the country's 11 million Web users enjoy broadband connections—and barely one in 20 of them has gone wireless. What's more, 90 percent of this vanguard lives in big cities, like Rio de Janeiro. But Bigfoot was never one to think small, and by early this year he'd gone off tilting at transmission towers.

Now humble Pirai, tucked discreetly behind a tall sierra 80 kilometers from Rio de Janeiro, may be the most advanced outpost of wirelessness in Brazil. Radio waves beamed from base stations perched on hills high above the town bring digital data into Pirai at a respectable 14 megabits per second. The signal is picked up by antennas, each the size of a cigarette pack, in health clinics, city hall and open-air kiosks where passers-by can log on for free. While most Brazilian public schoolers are lucky to have a library, students in Pirai elementary schools regularly consult Google and exchange e-mail.

Souza admits he is no computer whiz, but he proudly calls Pirai a digital city. "People thought the whole thing was a bit megalomaniacal," he says. "But I'm confident that technology can make a big difference for young people."

It's worth the gamble. In a continent where poverty has always prospered, fancy technology has long been the privilege of a wafer-thin class of sophisticates. Until the 1990s even a fixed telephone line was beyond the reach of most Latin American consumers. A decade of economic overhauling, including privatization of telephone services, changed things dramatically. Now mobile telephones are expected to outnumber land lines within a few years, and computer sales and Internet access are burgeoning.

Wireless technology has barely begun, but thanks to a healthy mix of pioneers like Souza, enterprising tech companies and a restless society hungry for the latest gadgets, that might soon change as well. Souza has made sure Pirai leads this trend. Several companies, including a software firm, have already migrated to Pirai, drawn by the reliable Web access. Students who were left behind in the classroom are using the Internet to catch up. "I'm even learning to use the Internet myself," Souza says. It's not a bad retirement plan.

—Mac Margolis

All Over the Place
Auckland, N.Z.
Population: 367,734
Why: City offers seamless connectivity
Fact: PCs and Web-enabled phones work anywhere within a 35km-wide wireless grid

Auckland is famous for sailing, aquariums, Maori culture and dinosaur skeletons. Wireless Internet access is perhaps not far behind. In most cities, connecting wirelessly to the Internet means scoping out a Wi-Fi hotspot and sitting with your laptop in one place, or surfing the Net over a pocket-size phone with a tiny screen. Six months ago Auckland became one of the few cities to see the deployment of a single wireless broadband network that blankets its entire area. Users can surf the Net from the beach, their office, their home or a moving bus.

Upstart telecom firm Woosh Wireless is responsible for developing the new network. The four-year-old firm installed three wireless base stations at each of 80 cellular sites around town, covering a 52-square-kilometer area. The technology lets subscribers surf the Net on their PCs but adds the freedom of mobile phones.

—Brad Stone

Higher Calling
Vatican City
Population: 1,000
Why: Spreading the faith via wireless
Fact: The pope sends a daily text-message prayer to the faithful on their cell phones

When you walk through the doors of St. Peter's Basilica these days, you might just catch the glow of a laptop or wireless PDA through the smoky haze of burning incense. The distant hum of Gregorian chants may even be interrupted by the bleep of a mobile phone or the ping of a text message. Vatican City joined the tech revolution in Christmas 1995, when Pope John Paul II launched the Vatican's Web site (vatican.va) with the text of his annual Urbi et Orbi address. Now it's taking advantage of wireless technology to spread the Word even farther. "When we came up with the idea that the Vatican go online, the holy father said, 'Yes, try it right away'," says Sister Judith Zoebelein, the technical director of the Vatican Internet Office. "But we had no idea how popular it would be."

The Vatican Web site, which is published in six languages, receives more than 2 million daily hits. Spurred by this success, the Roman Catholic Church is engaging in bolder experiments. Last year the Vatican News Service began delivering announcements to journalists on their BlackBerry wireless PDAs; in October it made the service available by subscription to anybody. Prior to that the church also began issuing a daily papal prayer in the form of a cell-phone text message; it now has more than a million subscribers. The Vatican hopes eventually to reach the millions of faithful in the developing world, who lack broadband Internet access or even reliable telephones. Its programmers are hard at work on a new version of the Web site that can fit the tiny screens of wireless PDAs. "Mass media can be a good means of evangelism," says Sister Judith.

In the next few months, Wi-Fi hotspots will be popping up all over St. Peter's Square and inside the church. By Easter, tourists with wireless laptops or PDAs may be able to download information about the architectural history of Bernini's columns or the significance of Michelangelo's Pieta in electronic form, to serve as e-book pocket guides. Sister Judith would love to see the church offer wireless e-learning of catechism or even marriage-preparation classes: "Technology, as it is made newly available, we believe becomes integrated into our environment under the guidance of the Holy Spirit." For the Vatican, the medium is indeed the message.

—Barbie Nadeau

Gambler's Link
Las Vegas, U.S.A.
Population: 478,434
Why: Wi-Fi fills boom- town's need to connect
Fact: This gambling mecca has no public Wi-Fi nodes, but nearly 70 commercial hotspots

Even inveterate gamblers need to check their e-mail once in a while. Hotels on the Strip like the Rio, Circus Circus and MGM Grand are joining the worldwide wave of hotels offering guests Wi-Fi access in their rooms. Dozens of Starbucks cafes, Subway stores and Panera Bread bakeries will let you log on while you munch. And chances are, if you're visiting Las Vegas for one of its many industry confabs, some enterprising company has turned the country's busiest convention center into a free Wi-Fi hotspot.

Vegas really shines, though, in setting an example for the many cities whose populations are exploding, and who are outrunning their utilities. Water shortages are chronic. And cable companies can't keep up with demand for Internet access. Local start-ups like Verde Communications are trying to plug the gap with wireless access. Verde's clients include the food court in the MGM Showcase mall, a bunch of local cafes and, most interesting, many of the city's RV parks. One, the Hitchin' Post RV Park and Motel, which first opened in 1970, uses Verde's technology to bring wireless Internet access to its residents for $36 a month. "It's a huge asset that drives customers to my property," says manager Brent Childress. It's not, however, much of a moneymaker. Verde divides the revenues with clients based on how much they initially contribute to building the network. Childress says Wi-Fi "brings in a little bit, but probably not enough to pay the entire bill.

-B.S.

Living the Wireless Lifestyle
Tokyo, Japan
Population: 12.4 mil.
Why: The cutting edge of cell-phone usage
Fact: Japan has 82 million cell phones, a fifth of which offer their users superfast Internet access

Chika Matsumoto rarely puts her cell phone down, even when she's hanging out with friends at a hamburger shop or soaking in the bathtub. The 17-year-old high-school student is constantly e-mailing her friends. "I want to be aware of what's going on with my friends and not to be left out," she says. Her mother wonders: is this an addiction?

If so, it's one most Tokyo residents share. Although this city may not have the most Wi-Fi hotspots, its population has, arguably, embraced the wireless lifestyle more than any other city. The Japanese were slow to catch on to the Internet, but they made up for it by going for cell phones in a big way. These days just about every person over the age of 12 owns a mobile phone82 million subscribers, of whom a fifth have a super-high-speed 3G phone. "In terms of the variety of ways mobile technologies help shape people's lives, there's no other place like Tokyo," says Hiroshi Miyanaga, the country's leading telecom expert and a professor at Tokyo University of Science.

The comfort level with cell phones should serve Tokyo residents well as wireless technology develops; many experts think the computer of the future will look more like a cell phone than like a PC. Already in Japan cultural pressures have pushed the cell-phone craze from an emphasis on voice to one on data. Riding a typically packed local train, Tokyo art coordinator Masako Hosoi sends out a one-liner to a friend that she'll be five minutes late for their lunch date. "I can't call her, because it would be annoying to the other passengers around me," she explains. The principle holds true in restaurants, coffee shops, beauty parlors, libraries and beyond.

Pundits are perhaps going too far when they warn that Japanese kids can no longer relate to one another except through their phones. But it is true, as social dynamics change, that traditional support structures are breaking down and technology is filling the gap. Hiroyo Ishibashi's fourth-grader son, Ryu, carries a wireless GPS-based tracking device called Cocosecom. When he's late coming home from school, she can pinpoint his whereabouts to within 10 meters. "I usually spot him walking in the neighborhood, and it's a relief," says his mother. "Neighbors used to look after children regardless of whether they were their own, but we no longer have that kind of thing." Japanese telecom companies have plans to equip mobile phones with smart cards, which will transform the devices into wireless credit cards. The cell phone is fast becoming a Swiss Army knife: all you need when you leave home.

—Kay Itoi

© 2007 Newsweek, Inc.

URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5076471/site/newsweek/

The Singles Scene: Bleep! She's Your Type!

Add matchmaking to the list of things mobiles are good for

Newsweek

June 7-14 issue - Christoph Oswald has no problem approaching women. As he makes his way through the crowd at his favorite Frankfurt club, his cell phone scans a 10-meter radius for "his type": tall, slim, sporty, in her 30s—and, most important, looking for him, a handsome 36-year-old software consultant who loves ski holidays. Before he reaches the bar, his phone starts vibrating and an attractive blonde appears on its screen. "Hi, I'm Susan," she says. "Come find me!" Christoph picks her out of the crowd, and soon they're laughing over a drink.

Both Christoph and Susan have phones equipped with Symbian Dater, a program that promises to turn the cell phone into a matchmaker. By downloading Symbian, they installed a 20-character encrypted code that includes details of who they are and what they're looking for in a mate. Whenever they go out, their matchmaking phones sniff out other Symbian Daters over the unlicensed, and therefore free, Bluetooth radio frequency. If profiles match up, the phones beep wildly and send out short video messages.

Since the service started in September, more than 155,000 people, mostly in Western Europe and Southeast Asia, have paid 5 Euro each to install it on their phones. If the growth of wired online dating is any indication, the potential market is enormous. In 2003, revenue from online personals was $450 million, up 50 percent from the year before, say market researchers ComScore.

New, more powerful wireless programs are on the way. Scientists at MIT's Media Lab are developing another Bluetooth matchmaker, called Serendipity, which logs on to the Net to check members' online profiles. This allows users to go into greater detail about their heart's desire and find out more about likely mates.

In the United States Match.com, the biggest online dating service, with 12 million members in 246 countries, plans to exploit the E911 location-based service that the U.S. government has required for emergency tracking purposes. That would allow cell phones to notify their owners when potential soul mates come within 700 meters and where, exactly, the other person is. Match.com VP Jeff Rudluff thinks the obvious privacy concerns won't derail the service. The urge to find love, after all, is nothing if not powerful.

—Emily Flynn

URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5093174/site/newsweek/

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Web 2.0 - the idea is to share

Websites and blogs are a fine way of sharing news, but the world of Web 2.0 is about stimulating multiple sensory organs and sharing your 'views' with others in quite a literal sense. Thanks to sites such as Flickr, PBase, Picasa, Metacafe and, of course, YouTube, photos and video clips have become as easy to upload and broadcast as the written word. In their most basic form, these services give us the means to share photos or home movies with family and friends, but on the larger scale they enable a kind of amateur, collaborative broadcast (look out for our feature on pod-casting next week!) These sites offer space to upload your media to their servers, and a range of tools with which to define who can see it and how they do so. These are more than basic Web galleries, however; you can accompany images or videos with text and categorise them via a system of intelligent, updateable metatags.

You can then collect them in albums, blogs or your own TV-style channels. When your collections reach a wider audience than your friends and family, that audience may need a way to have their say. They can comment, rate, or even add further metadata so yet others will find their way to your handiwork. It's this social aspect that makes the web 2.0 world so compelling; if enough people see and like what you do, there's no reason why you shouldn't get your 15 minutes of fame – if that's what you are after.

The technology behind these sites is generally standard (and standards-compliant) such as Flash, PHP, MySQL, Java or Perl. On YouTube or Metacafe, you don't even need to worry about file format conversions or plug-in viewers; the website does it all for you. You also get space on a server that can handle thousands of concurrent users, ease of use and having a high-profile platform from which to operate; YouTube receives an estimated 72 million visitors each month.

For the service providers, the kickbacks vary. The photo-sharing service Pbase relies on subscriptions, while Flickr, Metacafe and YouTube work on advertising models, offering the service for free but earning revenue from embedded adverts. In some cases, content producers get their own cut. Metacafe's rewards system means producers of successful videos can earn thousands of dollars.

Content sharing is a huge Web 2.0 growth area, and the long-established Internet players have been keen to get involved. Flickr is now part of the Yahoo empire while Microsoft is trialling its own YouTube-style service, MSN Soapbox. However, copyright issues are the thorns in the rosebush. Within weeks of YouTube's appearance, users had started to upload TV shows, music videos and movies, and Hollywood was quick to respond. Google bought YouTube last October and even though they may have anticipated lawsuits like the one that Viacom has brought, with more than 100 million clips viewed each day, the potential ad revenue is huge. Universal Music is known to be taking legal action against similar video-sharing sites, Grouper.com and Bolt.com.

'Smart dust' to explore planets

By Paul Rincon Science reporter, BBC News, Preston

Sand grain-sized particles could ride on Martian winds

Tiny "smart" devices that can be borne on the wind like dust particles could be carried in space probes to explore other planets, UK engineers say.

The devices would consist of a computer chip covered by a plastic sheath that can change shape when a voltage is applied, enabling it to be steered.

Details were presented at the National Astronomy Meeting in Preston.

Dr John Barker, from the University of Glasgow, said the particles could use wireless networking to form swarms.

The idea of using millimetre-sized devices to explore far-flung locations is nothing new, but Dr Barker and his colleagues are starting to look in detail at how it might be achieved.

The professor at Glasgow's Nanoelectronics Research Centre told delegates at the Royal Astronomical Society gathering that computer chips of the size and sophistication required to meet the challenge already existed.

Smart dust could be packed into the nose cones of planetary probes and then released into the atmospheres of planets, where they would be carried on the wind. For a planet like Mars, smart dust particles would each have to be the size of a grain of sand.

By applying a voltage to alter the shape of the polymer sheath surrounding the chip, dust particle could be steered towards a target, even in high winds.

The swarm

The polymer sheath surrounding the computer chip could be made to wrinkle or flatten out.

Wrinkling the plastic sheath would increase the drag on the particle, lifting it higher on the wind. Flattening out the sheath would cause the particle to plummet.

Wireless networking would allow these particles to form swarms, and Dr Barker's team has carried out mathematical simulations to see how this would work.

"We envisage that most of the particles can only talk to their nearest neighbours but a few can communicate at much longer distances.

"In our simulations, we have shown that a swarm of 50 dust particles can organise themselves into a star formation, even in turbulent wind."

The ability to fly in formation would allow the processing of data to be spread, or "distributed" between all the chips, and a collective signal to be beamed back to a "mothership".

Small sensors

Scientists have already demonstrated smart dust that crams sensors, power sources, digital communications and processing circuitry into a volume of a few cubic centimetres.

If they were to be used for planetary exploration, smart dust particles would have to carry sensors. But current chemical sensors would be too large to be carried on particles the size of sand grains.

The scientists hope the pace of miniaturisation will make smaller sensors available in coming decades.

"We are still at an early stage, working on simulations and components," said Dr Barker.

"We have a lot of obstacles to overcome before we are even ready to physically test our designs."

Many other applications have been proposed for smart dust. One idea is to use particles to gather information on battlefields. Another idea involves mixing the particles into concrete to internally monitor the health of buildings and bridges.

Your blog , your space

This is one of a six-part series on key WEB 2.0 technologies.

Blogging

About 10,000 new blogs are created every day. I would like to say that it should give you a picture of what's going on in cyberspace but that would be a gross understatement. Of all of the Web 2.0 mediums, blogging has made the biggest impact. They are almost as good as a personal website, far simpler to set up and as easy to use as email. Even though I can't honestly discount the possibility that there may be a few bloggers out there who have hidden agendas for world-domination, blogging has become the phenomenon that it is today simply because a healthy proportion of bloggers out there have something interesting to say.

As a method of getting your writing and ideas in front of an audience of potentially millions, there are few methods more effective than blogging. Even though hardcore bloggers will demand that a blog be updated at least once a week, your blog is your space to say what you want, when you want and the way you want. You need not be a great writer to have an active and popular blog, because blogs these days can have audio, video and pictures – making them versatile tools for self expression, irrespective of your medium of expression.

The key advantage of a blog is that you need not know a single HTML tag to be able to customise your blog and to start posting even though a little bit of technical know-how and common sense will take you an extra mile or two. And when it comes to posting, you can even email pictures and videos to your blog to post them instantly. It is no wonder that such pictures and mobile-phone captured videos published on the "blogosphere" (I promise that's the last time I am going to use that word!) became the first and most intimate accounts of the tsunami catastrophe and even from the scenes of terrorist attacks.

Most of us bloggers will only ever need the functionality and ease of use that a Blogger.com account offers, but for the more tech-savvy who are looking for more than just a personal Blog would find many uses for the professional features offered at Wordpress.com for free. There are also other free and paid blog services offered by different providers, but for all practical intents and purposes, Blogger and Wordpress can match up to any of them.

So how do you get yourself a blog? Well, first ask yourself whether you have anything interesting to say or show. If you do, read on to find out how you can become a blogger in another 20 minutes.

Try and make sure that you have a general theme for your blog – an idea about what you want it to be. It can literally be about "anything and everything" if you want it to be so.

Then go to http://www.wordpress.com/ (we will be using Wordpress.com in this example, but you may choose Blogger.com or any other blog service of your choice. Note that Blogger.com now requires that you have a Google account before you can sign up for a free account) and click on "Start a Blog in seconds" and even though that promise is not positively an honest one, you can still get your blog in 'minutes' but following the simple instructions on the site.

You can host your blog with most providers for free, or if you already have a registered domain, it is quite simple to direct your blog to the registered URL.

If you host your blog on your own specified server other than that of your blog provider, you may almost certainly have to download a piece of software from your provider and install it on your web-server before it can host your blog.

You can customize the look and feel of your blog by choosing a theme, the sidebar arrangement, by adding external links, changing the header image, adding RSS feeds and so on.

Perhaps you may want to circulate your blog only among your friends or you may want to advertise your blog and draw in as many visitors as possible.

To get the mildly offensive advice out of the way; the key to making your blog popular is by having something interesting to say. If the popularity of your blog is important to you, then you can also promote it on 'democratic news' or 'social book-marking sites such as Digg, del.icio.us or Furl (we will talk about these in the coming weeks) and also promote it on Blog tracking services such as Technorati. If the contents of your blog is targeted at a Sri Lankan audience, you can submit it to community blogs such as http://moju.lk/ or http://www.kottu.org/ Also make an effort to engage yourself constructively in blogger communities by commenting on blog posts that interest you and sharing thoughts and ideas with others who may be able to appreciate your input. Make sure you are polite and courteous towards other bloggers and respectful of the right of others to hold opinions that may not only be different but opposite and sometimes even offensive to you.

Techno Page welcomes bloggers to write in with their thoughts, ideas and any information they want to share. Please forward your epistles to technopage@gmail.com

Cell phones, text-messaging revolutionalize conservation approaches

Cell phones have been adopted at a pace unmatched by any technology in the history of mankind. While conventional use of these devices continues to be the expand, mobile phones are also increasingly being viewed as tools for conservation and development.

Ken Banks, currently a Visiting Fellow on the Reuters Digital Vision Program at Stanford University, understands this well. Banks established kiwanja.net as hub for the latest information on how technology, in particular mobile phones, can be applied to tackle issues of economic empowerment, conservation, education, human rights and poverty alleviation.

Preparing a conservation plan in Kenya. Courtesy of the Kiwanja mobile image gallery

Banks says that the development of low-cost handsets and the spread of second-hand phones into emerging markets like South Asia and Africa – one of the fastest growing markets with well in excess of 125 million subscribers – is generating a revolution in how organizations approach conservation projects. Mobile phones offer these groups new ways to engage stakeholders, while reducing overhead costs and inefficiencies. The technology can even allow them to track animals, protect parks, and conduct surveys in some of the world's most remote forests.

In April 2007 Banks spoke with mongabay.com about his work.

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Mongabay: How did you become involved with applying mobile technology to conservation and development?

Banks: Originally I was in the information technology (IT) industry but my mother and grandparents have always been very keen on nature and the environment. I must have inherited the family gene for nature because ever since I was a child I've been fascinated by the outdoors.

Ken Banks in Mana Pools, Zimbabwe

The experience that really cemented my interest in conservation and development was a trip to Zambia in 1993. I was awarded a place on a Jersey Overseas Aid project where I helped build a school. While I was there, I started to think about where all the aid money was going and why it didn't seem to be particularly effective. I began to look at the practical side of conservation and development efforts, when previously my interest had been primarily in wildlife - the kind of stuff you saw on David Attenborough's shows and other TV programs. In 1995 I went back to Africa to help build a hospital in Uganda. By then I was really quite captivated and I knew it was something I wanted to be involved in.

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Mongabay: So it sounds like your first foray into this kind of work was from a humanitarian angle?

Banks with an infant during his overseas aid trip to Uganda, in 1995

Banks: Well yes, these were the opportunities that were available to me at the time from a foreign standpoint. In Jersey the IT company I was working for had Jersey Zoo among their clients, now known as Durrell Wildlife. During my 3 to 4 years involvement there, I got very interested in conservation from a developing country standpoint - not just what was going on in Jersey but the wider global issues. It gave me the opportunity to tap into some of the real leaders in the field and see captive breeding and habitat conservation programs firsthand. I also benefited from the excellent learning center at Durrell, where they train conservation workers from developing countries in the latest conservation techniques. It's through these experiences that my IT background really began to blend into conservation and development work. It was a great time and I was very fortunate to have experienced it.

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Mongabay: When did you go off on your own?

Banks: I left my job in Jersey in 1996 to go the University of Sussex to pursue a degree in Social anthropology with development studies. I sold everything I owned at that point and left for the UK with two suitcases. That was the beginning of the journey. I formed kiwanja.net in 2003 after I returned from a year working with primates in Nigeria.

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Mongabay: What is it that you do through kiwanja.net?

Banks: kiwanja.net helps local, national and international nonprofit organizations make better use of information and communications technology in their work. While the site is more of an information resource, I generally function as an intermediary between the technology - especially mobile technology - and conservation or development groups. You'll see organizations like the Gates Foundation looking at technology use in developing countries. I help put them in contact with people in the field as well as some of the technology and applications under development. Part of what I do is match-making in a sense. I have also developed mobile applications for use in conservation and development, such as FrontlineSMS.

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Mongabay: What advantages do mobile technologies offer conservation and development groups?

Cheap mobile phones are now sold in markets all over the world. Courtesy of the Kiwanja mobile image gallery

Banks: While large numbers of organizations have been trying to promote the spread of the Internet in rural parts of developing countries, penetration rates are still pretty low in many areas. Mobile phones, however, have been spreading rapidly and today are nearly ubiquitous in some countries, leapfrogging the number of land lines in a matter of 3 or 4 years. We now have a situation where even if people don't themselves own a cell phone, they can easily find access to one through another member of the community, or through various Village Phone schemes.

Because of their widespread adoption, we are now seeing mobile phones being used for many conservation and development applications. Many center around improving communication between stakeholders and NGOs - for example, sending out alerts on impending natural disasters like tsunami and hurricanes, or wildlife alerts, or posting job openings or health messages. The advantages of text messaging is that it is very quick, generally cheap, and direct. Most people read the text messages they receive, unlike spam. It also works on every phone regardless of form factor - a critical issue in areas where a lot of the phones can be as much as 5 to 7 years old. These phones are often useless for surfing the Internet but they work fine for SMS.

As for conservation applications, I focus on the improved communication capabilities. Unlike in the past where you had government agencies evicting people from their land in order to set up protected areas, today it is realized that conservation efforts must involve local people, otherwise you only disenfranchise them and drive them to oppose conservation efforts. Now with the rise of community-based conservation and integrated conservation and development projects, communication can reduce these issues - mobile phones allow us to open channels that were never before possible. For example, in Kruger National Park (South Africa), the park management used to have to send a Land Rover out to the 18 different communities living around the park to inform them of meetings, give them latest news, and so on. If a meeting was canceled or changed, the ranger had to go back out. It might take days to spread the world. Today it is possible to simply broadcast a text message. We can even set up a database that captures text responses from various communities on whether they will be able to attend or how they would vote on a particular initiative. This functionality frees up a lot of resources for more meaningful and productive activities from both the parks' and community's perspective.

Organizations are also finding that mobile phones can serve as an activism tool. SMS messaging can be used to organize petitions and plan demonstrations. In fact, the tool is so powerful that it is even a concern for repressive governments. In recent elections in both Cambodia and Iran the government shut down messaging servers to prevent demonstrators from organizing and campaigning. They didn't want to take any chances after what happened in Ukraine, where the Orange Revolution may not have been possible without text messaging services, and the Philippines, where President Estrada was toppled by gatherings organized by text messaging campaigns.

In Zimbabwe journalists are now using text messaging to distribute news since President Robert Mugabe clamped down on e- mail and shortwave broadcast media.

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Mongabay: It sounds like most of these applications are top-down approaches. Are the examples of user-generated content?

Banks discussing technology use at Johannesburg Zoo in 2005

Banks: Definitely, but it's in the early stages in many cases. The release of my FrontlineSMS system is an attempt to bring the technology into hands of the users, and to promote more of a bottom-up approach. In terms of user-generated content, current 'hot' applications include SMS blogging, which really blossomed during last year's Israel-Lebanon conflict. We saw news being generated by SMS messaging as Beirut was getting bombed. The real-time nature of the posts provided insight on what was really happening on the ground. This type of reporting - citizen journalism - is very much technology driven and the BBC, for example, regularly request people near the thick of the action, particularly with camera-phone images or mobile video, to send them in.

From a conservation perspective, mobile phones are increasingly used for surveys and monitoring. In Kenya, for example, Save The Elephants are using GPS/GSM collars to track elephants. Compared to the alternatives it's cheap, real-time, and doesn't depend on ARGOS satellites which drives up complexity and costs. These devices not only help the organisation understand how elephants use their environments, but it also provides farmers and villagers with an early-warning system so they can protect crops from being eaten and trampled. Human elephant conflict is still a big issue in many countries. In South Africa, a wireless animal tracking system provided by African Wildlife Tracking helps researchers track wildlife in game reserves. Once fitted with a tracking device, text messages are sent to the device to pinpoint the longitude and latitude of the animal. Again this is much simpler and cost-effective than involving multi-million dollar satellites, or more time-consuming VHF tracking systems.

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Mongabay: What are the biggest challenges to your work?

Banks: The big problem I see is that people are generally reluctant to share. It's hard to find examples of mobile phone applications for conservation so you see a lot of wheel-spinning and duplication. The mobile phone is being touted as the device that will bridge the digital divide, so there should be more collaboration between organizations trying to address these important issues. You know, how many 'ICT for development' portals do we need? Rather than going it alone, I think peoples' first instincts should be to look at collaboration wherever possible.

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Mongabay: So this is where you come in with kiwanja.net?

Banks with renowned British naturalist, Sir David Attenborough

Banks: Yes, kiwanja is developing into a bit of an information hub for the latest news on applying mobile technology to conservation and development, and crucially for me this has been needs-driven by the community, not something that I think is needed. The mobile applications database contains details of more than 200 projects from around the world that use mobile technology in fields including human health, economic empowerment, conservation, education, human rights and poverty alleviation, and it is growing all the time. I get emails from researchers telling me how valuable it has been in their work. There is also an image gallery showing mobile technology in action in developing countries. Again, I was concerned about the lack of images which many non-profits needed for campaigning literature, project proposals, websites and so on. Before that, most of the good images I was finding came at a price, whereas mine are free to use. Openness, sharing and transparency are key pillars of my work.

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Mongabay: How are mobile phones used for health?

Banks: In Nigeria and India we are seeing government agencies and NGOs use SMS as a health education messaging application. There are also groups using mobiles and mobile networks for disease surveillance. What just a few years ago took three months to report is now almost instantaneous. Spreading the word of outbreaks in remote areas saves lives.

One interesting health application is the SIMpill which helps with the problem of people not finishing their course of antibiotics. This of course only produces drug-resistant strains that are more difficult to treat. SIMpill is an SMS-enabled pill bottle which, when opened, delivers a text message to a central server. Each SMS is time stamped and kept as a record of the patient taking their medication. The doctor is warned via text message if the patient is not taking their medication properly.

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Mongabay: In what other ways can SMS and mobile telephony be used in conservation?

Banks: We are seeing SMS used in both fundraising and awareness-raising campaigns and for more conservation-specific applications.

Girl in Mozambique. Photo by Ken Banks.

One project I was heavily involved in was wildlive! , a service which promoted global conservation by providing news and information on various issues through peoples' handsets. It also had a direct fundraising angle through the sale of conservation-themed wallpapers, ringtones and games. Funds raised went to Fauna & Flora International, a UK-based organization, and directly to the conservation projects being promoted.

In Sumatra, tiger researcher Debbie Martyr kept a live field diary that was broadcast via a mobile internet site. Her experiences included live sting operations which used camera-phones to capture poachers and illegal fur traders in action.

In the Okapi Wildlife Reserve of the Democratic Republic of Congo, satellite phones enable patrols to text message their GPS location along with a short message from anywhere in the Reserve. The base operator can then call the patrol teams in an emergency, resulting in a much quicker response to threats to the Reserve.

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Mongabay: What do you think about the Amazon Conservation Team's (ACT) project in the Amazon which uses GPS and Google Earth to map tribal lands and protect the forest against illegal encroachment? It's not mobile technology but it seems to have some parallels.

Amazon natives use Google Earth, GPS to protect rainforest home. Deep in the most remote jungles of South America, Amazon Indians (Amerindians) are using Google Earth, Global Positioning System (GPS) mapping, and other technologies to protect their fast-dwindling home. Tribes in Suriname, Brazil, and Colombia are combining their traditional knowledge of the rainforest with Western technology to conserve forests and maintain ties to their history and cultural traditions, which include profound knowledge of the forest ecosystem and medicinal plants. Helping them is the Amazon Conservation Team (ACT), a nonprofit organization working with indigenous people to conserve biodiversity, health, and culture in South American rainforests.

Banks: ACT's project is very interesting. What makes it particularly exciting from my perspective is that it is very anthropological. Conservation is not just about working with wildlife, it's also about working with people so anthropology, with its human-centred focus, is of particular relevance. For many people it's still not an obvious fit, particularly when technology is involved. I've been speaking at companies, workshops and conferences a lot about this lately.

What I really like about the ACT project is that it's needs-driven, based on needs of the local people, not donors. The users - in this case the Amazonian tribes - see the relevance of the technology so they embrace it, and the technology fits in seamlessly with what they are trying to achieve. More remarkable is that the program also promotes cultural preservation in a climate where culture loss is a serious concern.

Did you see the announcement on the Darfur features added to Google Earth this week? What we are seeing is the creation of "communities of consciousness" that develop an interest and awareness in the human stories behind events. It's a great way to build strong support for an issue. I think ACT could do a similar thing if the tribes wanted to post up some of their sacred stories so that the general public could get a better understanding of their history and culture. It could serve as a rallying point for their concerns over forest development. Maybe they're already doing this.

While there are always concerns over whether technology will drive people away from their traditional lifestyles, in cases such as this technologies can provide new opportunities whilst allowing people to continue to live in traditional ways. As Mark Plotkin at ACT has said, it's the best of both worlds.

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Mongabay: What are your thoughts on the "One Laptop Per Child" (OLPC) initiative that provides low-cost (i.e. $100), durable laptops to children in developing countries?

The $100 laptop. Photo courtesy of One Laptop per Child.

Banks: I think it is an interesting experiment - which is basically what it is - but the jury is still out on OLPC. Personally I have problems more with the process than the product. One of the best arguments I've heard on why it has the potential to be ethically problematic is that you are asking some of the world's poorest countries to foot the bill for what is essentially a prototype. These governments will be spending hundreds of millions of dollars each, up front, to fund an unproven technology. It is fraught with risk and on a production scale that has never been attempted before in the ICT for development field. While it may turn out that these concerns are totally unfounded, it seems like an expensive way of "having a go" - especially for governments least able to afford it. Comparably, if you look at the mobile phone it is ubiquitous, cheaper, and less complex. We're seeing more companies and organizations developing emerging market handsets based on 2, 3 or 4 years of real-world experience. You can't say that about OLPC. OLPC can't really compare itself to anything, although OLPC 2.0 (if I can call it that!) would be able to.

But, to be fair, OLPC might well be a revolution - I'm not trying to knock the project. You have to credit the developers for going out there and trying to do something bold for the benefit of humankind.

Interestingly, India actually turned down the project. Instead, it is evaluating home grown technologies (called NetTV and NETPC), which begs the question of whether a single product can really work on a global scale in emerging markets. The world is not homogenous and technology definitely needs to be tested out in the field. I've often seen a disconnect between technology developers and the real-world use of their products. At a recent conference I attended in India for W3C, there was very little emphasis on the user - it was all about the technology. There's a big difference between how something is used in an airport lounge and how well it might work in a remote village with limited power supply, 100-degree heat, dust storms and a semi-literate user. For many developers, how their technology works in an emerging-market context is generally an after-thought.

In the places where I work, it is the first question I tend to ask.

Ken Banks is currently a Visiting Fellow on the Reuters Digital Vision Program at Stanford University.

Use HTML to Open a Link in a New Window

Don't you hate it when you click a link on a page and up pops a new window. Even worse, you leave a site and up pops a window reminding you to come back soon, or visit their sponsor or whatever.

Why do they do that? If it's so irritating, then why am I going to show you how to do it?

In fact it's a very useful technique and, used sparingly, can be helpful to your visitors. One of its main uses it to avoid 'losing' a visitor. For example, in the middle of one of your pages you have a link to another site. Your visitor follows the link... and doesn't come back. You've lost them!

Web designers overcome this problem in all sorts of ways. They sometimes put all their external links on a separate page - not very helpful for the visitor but they are less likely to go until they have finished with you. Another technique is to use frames - the visitor clicks a link which then opens in a separate frame on the same page so that they view the other site from within yours. But lots of people don't like frames - it might make it difficult for them to 'escape' from your site, and they might not know how to 'bookmark' the new site. Perhaps frames just don't suit the design of your page.

The answer is of course... a new window!

New Windows with HTML

Forcing a link to open in a new window is simply a matter of adding an additional attribute to the link's code. Suppose you have a straightforward link to a page. The visitor sees something like...

Visit Fontstuff today!

Here's the code...

Visit Fontstuff today!

Now let's modify the link to force it to open the linked page in a new window. What the visitor sees is no different...

Visit Fontstuff today!

...but when they click the link a new browser window opens displaying the linked page inside. Here's the code...

Visit Fontstuff today!

The addition of the TARGET attribute to a hyperlink lets you dictate where the linked page opens. To open a new page I have used target="_blank" but there are others...

target="_blank"	Opens the linked page in a new window.
target="_self"	Opens the linked page in the same window. This is the default for ordinary pages and doesn't need to be specified. It has a use when working with frames.
target="_parent"	Opens the linked page in the parent frame in a frames page.
target="_top"	Opens the linked page in a full (i.e. top level) window when used in frames pages. This one is useful for letting a linked page 'break out' of a frame.

In fact, you can insert any window name that you might have defined elsewhere. Using the JavaScript technique outlined below you could create a new window with a particular name, then use this method to cause all subsequent linked pages to open in it. (Find out how to do this and check out the demo!)

Setting a Default

If you want all the links on your page to open in a new window you don't have to modify every one. It's a simple matter to apply a default setting for the page so that all the links behave the same way. Here's how...

Insert the following code...

<

...into the header of your document's HTML (i.e. anywhere between the and tags but not inside any other pairs of tags already there). You can substitute "_blank" with one of the other names if appropriate.

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How FrontPage Does It...

FrontPage 2002, FrontPage 2000 and FrontPage 98 Select the text you want to hyperlink (or the link you want to edit) and choose Insert > Hyperlink. In the Edit Hyperlink dialog box find Target Frame: and click the Change Target Frame button. The Target Frame dialog box offers a list of common targets, or you can enter your own. For a new window select New Window and you'll see _blank appear in the Target Setting box. Click OK twice and it's done. To set a default, check the Set as page default box and all links on that page will work the same way. If you have already made your hyperlinks, you can quickly set the default from the Page Properties dialog box. Choose File > Properties (or right-click on the page and choose Page Properties...) and on the General tab find Default Target Frame. Click the Change Target Frame button and proceed as described above.

FrontPage Express Select the text you want to hyperlink (or the link you want to edit) and choose Insert > Hyperlink. In the Edit Hyperlink dialog box click in the Target Frame: box and type "_blank" (without the quotes). Click OK. To set a default target for all the links on the current page choose File > Page Properties (or right-click on the page and choose Page Properties...). Find Default Target Frame and enter the target name as above.

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For complete control over how and where your new window appears you can use JavaScript. Take a look at the article on Opening New Windows with JavaScript.

Bookmark Bliss: The Developer Cheat Sheet Compilation

This is a post I put together a few months back for one of my friends blogs before I got started doing things myself. I guess he wasn’t much for blogging longevity and sort of gave up before he even began. Like my article on 50 sources for web design inspiration, this list comes primarily from my years of accumulated bookmarks. I think this article was a great resource though and is one I think Fuzzy Future readers will be interested in, so I decided to post it here as well so it didn’t go extinct. I’ve added some new stuff I’ve found since the original posting so hopfully this is as useful to you as it has been for me…

I know personally, I’m not one of those people that can remember every detail of every language without looking things up. It’s nice to have a cheat sheet with a quick summary of some of the most commonly used procedures, tags, tools, syntax, etc, saving time that would have been used to look it up on Google or dig through documentation either online or in printed text. The following is a list of links to several different cheat sheets on a wide variety of tasks and tools. You can print them out and hang them on your wall (my personal choice) or simply bookmark them for easy access down the road. If you have any additional suggestions or see something I’ve missed, let me know…

Command Line

1. Windows NT/XP Command Line Reference
2. Bash Command Line Reference
3. Bash Command Line Programming Reference
4. DOS Commands

Databases

1. Firebird SQL Cheat Sheet
2. MySQL Cheat Sheet
3. MySQL Reference List
4. Oracle Cheat Sheet
5. Oracle PL/SQL Cheat Sheet
6. Oracle 9i Server Reference (PDF)
7. Oracle 9i Command Reference
8. PostgreSQL Cheat Sheet
9. PostgreSQL Cheat Sheet List
10. SQL Cheat Sheet
11. SQL Server 2005 Commands

Programming

1. Ada Syntax Card (PDF)
2. ASP/VBScript Cheat Sheet
3. C++ Language Summary
4. C++ Reference Sheet (PDF)
5. C++ Containers Cheat Sheet
6. C# Language Reference
7. C# Programmer’s Reference Sheet
8. Delphi Technical Reference Card (PDF)
9. Java Syntax Cheat Sheet
10. Java Quick Reference (PDF)
11. Java Reference for C++
12. JSP 2.0 Syntax Reference Sheet (PDF)
13. LaTeX Reference Card (PDF)
14. .NET Cheat Sheets
15. Perl Cheat Sheet
16. Perl Reference Card (PDF)
17. Perl Regular Expression Quick Reference (PDF)
18. Perl Reference Guide
19. PHP Cheat Sheet
20. PHP Developer Cheat Sheet
21. Python 101 Cheat Sheet
22. Python 2.5 Quick Reference
23. Python Cheat Sheet
24. Python Quick Reference (PDF)
25. Ruby Cheat Sheet (PDF)
26. Ruby on Rails Cheat Sheet Collectors Edition
27. Ruby Reference
28. Ruby on Rails Reference Sheet

Unix/Linux

1. Debian Linux Reference Guide (PDF)
2. Linux Shortcuts and Commands
3. One Page Linux Manual (PDF)
4. TCP Ports List
5. Treebeard’s Unix Cheat Sheet
6. Unix Command Line Tips

Web Development

1. Actionscript 2.0 Cheat Sheet (PDF)
2. Actionscript 3.0 Cheat Sheet (PDF)
3. Cold Fusion Cheat Sheet
4. CSS Cheat Sheet
5. CSS 2 Reference Card (PDF)
6. CSS Reference Sheet
7. CSS Shorthand Guide
8. CSS Useful Properties
9. Drupal 4.7 Cheat Sheet
10. .htaccess Cheat Sheet
11. HTML Cheat Sheet
12. HTML Dom Quick Reference Card (PDF)
13. Javascript Cheat Sheet
14. Javascript Quick Reference
15. Javascript Reference Page * No Longer Available
16. JQuery Cheat Sheet (PDF)
17. JQuery Reference (PDF)
18. JQuery Visual Map
19. Mod_Rewrite Cheat Sheet
20. Scriptaculous Combination Effects Field Guide (PDF)
21. XHTML Cheat sheet
22. XHTML Reference
23. XHTML & HTML Cheat Sheet
24. XML Syntax Quick Reference (PDF)
25. XML Schema Reference (PDF)
26. XSLT and XPath Quick Reference (PDF)

Miscellaneous Topics

1. Ascii Codes Cheat Sheet
2. CVS Cheat Sheet
3. EMacs Keyboard Shortcut Reference
4. Regular Expressions Cheat Sheet
5. RGB Hex Colour Chart
6. Subversion Quick Reference (PDF) * No Longer Available
7. Theoretical Computer Science Cheat Sheet (PDF)
8. UML Quick Reference Card (PDF)
9. UML Cheat Sheet
10. Vi Cheat Sheet
11. Vim Commands Cheat Sheet
12. XEmacs Commands Cheat Sheet

Have you found this list useful? If so, show your support by subscribing to our news feed. We’ve posted several other entries in our Bookmark Bliss series that you might find interesting as well…

1. Bookmark Bliss: 50 Sources for Web Design Inspiration
2. Bookmark Bliss: The Developer Cheat Sheet Compilation
3. Bookmark Bliss: 30 Web Developer Community Forums
4. Bookmark Bliss: 101+ Stock Image Resources

As always, your comments are welcome and please let us know of any sites we might have missed.

Java Sand Box

A security measure in the Java development environment. The sandbox is a set of rules that are used when creating an applet that prevents certain functions when the applet is sent as part of a Web page. When a browser requests a Web page with applets, the applets are sent automatically and can be executed as soon as the page arrives in the browser. If the applet is allowed unlimited access to memory and operating system resources, it can do harm in the hands of someone with malicious intent. The sandbox creates an environment in which there are strict limitations on what system resources the applet can request or access. Sandboxes are used when executable code comes from unknown or untrusted sources and allow the user to run untrusted code safely.

The Java sandbox relies on a three-tiered defense. If any one of these three elements fails, the security model is completely compromised and vulnerable to attack:

• byte code verifier -- This is one way that Java automatically checks untrusted outside code before it is allowed to run. When a Java source program is compiled, it compiles down to platform-independent Java byte code, which is verified before it can run. This helps to establish a base set of security guarantees.
• applet class loader -- All Java objects belong to classes, and the applet class loader determines when and how an applet can add classes to a running Java environment. The applet class loader ensures that important elements of the Java run-time environment are not replaced by code that an applet tries to install.
• security manager -- The security manager is consulted by code in the Java library whenever a dangerous operation is about to be carried out. The security manager has the option to veto the operation by generating a security exception.

Software Patch Makes Car More Fuel-efficient

Science Daily — A car wastes energy almost continuously. Whether it is running in first, second, or a higher gear, there is only one position of the accelerator that guarantees optimal performance. Accelerating a little less or a little bit more can cause considerable loss of energy. John Kessels has designed a way to save energy by enabling the car to achieve optimal engine performance more frequently. With a relatively small modification it is possible to reduce fuel consumption by 2.6%. Kessels obtained his doctorate from the Technical University Eindhoven (TU/e) on Wednesday February 14, 2007.

Car manufacturers are frequently criticized for failing to reduce fuel consumption. In order to meet the Kyoto objectives, European car manufacturers have agreed to reduce the emission of CO2 for their fleet to 140 grams per kilometer in 2008. Many car manufacturers have not yet attained this reduced emission. Ford is one of them and the company has been diligently searching for a way to further increase the fuel-efficiency of its cars.

Hybrid cars

One way to reduce fuel consumption is to build so-called hybrid cars. In these cars the internal combustion engine is more fuel-efficient because a secondary power source is available: a generator. If the power from the combustion engine exceeds the actual power demand for driving, this generator stores the excess power in the car’s battery. It also works the other way around. The generator can provide extra power if the car needs more power than the combustion engine can provide at optimum performance. Hybrid vehicles thus reduce fuel consumption by 25% or more.

Electric energy systems

Kessels examined the possible savings without using the advanced hybrid technology. He found that excess power can be used to charge the car battery. In addition, the generator, which charges the car battery, can be turned off when it is inefficient for the engine to power it, which leads to reduced fuel consumption. The car can also brake electrically, generating energy, which can be stored in the battery. Finally, he found that it is possible to partly shut off the electric energy systems, such as rear window and seat heating, for further improvement of the power supply system.

Software patch

With his new method Kessels can achieve a total fuel savings of 2.6%, without having to replace any of the parts of the car. Simply uploading a software patch to the car’s computer and adding one single small cable suffices. If it were possible to shut the engine off when it is idle, a savings of 5 to 6% could be achieved. This, however, would require significant adjustments to the car, including installing a more powerful starter motor and an automatic gearbox.

Note: This story has been adapted from a news release issued by Eindhoven University of Technology.

Adobe Systems Inc. on Jan. 29 announced that it has released the full PDF (Portable Document Format) 1.7 specification to AIIM, the Association for In

Q&A:Adrian Ford, CTO of Global Graphics, explains the specification that Microsoft is developing with his company's help.

At the WinHEC keynote in April, Microsoft Corp. founder Bill Gates previewed Metro, the company's next-generation, XML-based, electronic-document initiative that is expected to become available at around the same time Windows Longhorn is released. In conjunction with Microsoft's announcement of Metro, UK-based software company Global Graphics announced that for the last two years it has been working closely with Microsoft to develop Metro's specifications. At WinHEC, Global Graphics demonstrated ways in which the printing industry might make use of Metro once it becomes available. Recently, PDFzone sat down with Dr. Adrian Ford, Global Graphics' chief technology officer, to discuss Metro's functionalities and his company's involvement with its development. PDFzone: Please give us an overview of Metro. Ford: Metro is really three different things in one. First off, it's a new document file format, similar in many ways to PDF. It's also a spool format. When you print on a Windows or a Mac computer, the print system has a format that it uses to communicate the data through the print subsystem and spool it to the device. And it's also a page description language, similar to PCL PostScript, that can be used to transmit that information all the way down to a printer, where it turns into the data that comes out on a piece of paper. In addition to this format, there is also a new printing subsystem. Microsoft announced they're fixing a number of the printing bottlenecks and issues in the current Windows subsystem by implementing a new architecture for printing that includes Metro as a key foundation of that architecture. Click here to read more about Microsoft's "Metro" and analysts' reactions to the demonstration at WinHEC. PDFzone: Given that it is expected to become available at the same time as Longhorn, is Metro specifically being designed for Longhorn? Ford: It's tied to Longhorn, but it's part of what [Microsoft is] calling WinFX. WinFX is going to be available on Longhorn, Windows XP and Windows 2003. So the time scales are the same as Longhorn, but the potential install base is much bigger than the Longhorn platform. PDFzone: When did Microsoft approach you to work on Metro, and for what reasons do you believe the company wanted to work with you? Ford: We've been working closely with [Microsoft] since early 2003. One of the reasons they came to us and asked us to help them is honestly because we have a lot of expertise and experience working with other document formats with the products that we have in the PDF space and also with other PDLs [Page Description Languages], our work with PostScript and PDF RIP [Raster Image Processor] products and technology. We've also got a very wide and broad customer base. Virtually all of our products go out through OEM and ISV channels, where the technology we provide is built into other people's products. So a lot of the industry's problems and issues that they face, we're very aware of what they are. One of the things we've been able to do, as well as providing our expertise and feedback to that specification, is to bring a lot of industry issues that our partners experience and make sure that they're addressed in the work that Microsoft is doing. And that consultation work is quite a valuable exercise on both sides for making sure this actually does address real-world issues for the print subsystem on Windows. Click here to read David Morgenstern's take on Metro. PDFzone: What sort of work are you doing on behalf of Microsoft for Metro? Ford: We've been doing work to develop a prototype implementation of our Metro high-performance RIP. This is a component that takes Metro documents and converts those into the raster data needed to print them. We've been doing that for a number of reasons. One of them is so that we can demonstrate with Microsoft and the industry that you can consume this format in a device. And that was part of a demonstration that we were showing at WinHEC. We've also been working closely with the hardware vendors in that area. It's given us very valuable feedback into the specification, so there's actually a real implementation behind a lot of the feedback that we give Microsoft from the spec itself. [In addition], we're also taking the core technology that we're developing and making it available as a reference implementation for the print industry. If you have a third party generating Metro documents, there's a reference implementation that can be used to make sure that the implementation conforms with this print reference. That is quite a wide project that we've been working with them on, but that kind of sums it up. PDFzone: What is Microsoft's motivation for developing Metro? Ford: Metro is very tightly related to this thing called WinFX. WinFX is a supplementary or replacement set of APIs that will allow people to develop applications in a way that mixes the best of the rich-client approach, the best of an application that runs on Windows today that has a rich user interface, and mix that with the best of a Web-based application, the kinds of things you get from things like Flickr or Google maps or things like that. [Microsoft] can mix those two development paradigms into one way of generating applications. WinFX [provides] this new user interface for developers, and that user-interface model is the same as the one used in the Metro format. So there's a very tight linkage there between the ways developers can use the API that Microsoft provides to author documents and user interfaces on the platform. PDFzone: Is Microsoft trying to compete directly with Adobe with its development of Metro? Ford: That's a question that, in all honesty, has to be directed at Microsoft and Adobe. PDFzone: How is Metro similar to PDF? Ford: [Like PDF], you can have a Metro document that sits on disk and that you share with other people and e-mail around, and that document contains all the graphical data and resources and images and fonts and everything else, and supports compression in an efficient container, and people can view that document in a viewer that isn't related to content creation applications. In that sense the format does have similar characteristics with PDF. Also, if you look at the specifications for PDF and for Metro they have similar functionalities defined within them. PDFzone: How does Metro differ from PDF? Ford: It's mainly the usage things that we see as being different between the two. Who's going to use them and where they're going to use them are big questions at the moment, where they're going to be different. One of the key things about Metro is the use of it within the print subsystem on Windows. There are number of issues and limitations you have to face printing on Windows. The application developers or printer-driver developers have to work extremely hard to make those things work and to bypass these limitations in the print subsystem. Today you could have an application that understands RGB wide-gamut photo printing, but the application can't send that data through the print subsystem to a printer because that extra information gets lost. So today you often get software that bypasses the print subsystem, and you can't go file to print nice pictures on your Epson printer. There are a number of real issues that Metro solves on the print side that PDF doesn't solve.

PDFzone: How would Metro fix the aforementioned problem? Please elaborate.

Ford: You can buy fairly cheaply a digital camera that supports a wide gamut, greater than 8-bit RGB color, and you can get very cheaply an ink-jet printer that has got a very wide gamut of color reproduction and [obtain] excellent photographic prints from it.

Right now, if you drop that image into Microsoft Word and hit "file-print," you lose all that extended color information because the print path can't handle it. With Metro that format can handle that extended information in the same way that PDF can. You'll be at the printer in the normal way. Many users won't even realize that Metro is being used, they won't care what's under the hood, but they'll get much better quality of the stuff that they print on the Windows platform.

PDFzone: Describe another way in which Metro solves a specific problem.

Ford: Another example would be making PDFs today. Many people make PDFs in the application they are working in, and they print to Distiller or to something else, and what's happening underneath is that the application is printing through the Windows print subsystem through a thing called the GDI [Graphic Device Interface] print subsystem. A print driver converts that to PostScript, and the PostScript gets converted to PDF.

However, there are a number of features that PDF supports that you can't actually get into the PDF files through that route. An example of that is transparency. Applications like PowerPoint and Word in Office 2003 support transparency, but if you try to make a PDF from those, you don't get that transparency information even though PDF can support that transparency.

Metro will enable people like Adobe or Global Graphics to make better PDFs on the Windows platform. So you can see the print subsystem is being improved by the stuff that Microsoft is doing that will enable that information to be passed down and help people make better PDFs than they can today.

An analogy of that is to say that at the moment there's a four-lane highway, and when that [highway] hits the print subsystem, it becomes a single-track road with passing places. Everything slows down, and you don't get as much data through that pipeline. With WinFX coming, it's very clear that the highway is going to get much wider, but the print subsystem is still this single-track road with passing places. So one of the key things that Microsoft is doing [by developing Metro] is bringing the print subsystem up to a point where it can support the stuff that is coming with WinFX.

PDFzone: Which format do you see as being more viable, PDF or Metro?

Ford: From the Global Graphics perspective, we see segments and markets where both these formats are going to be very important and where they have specific strengths either in the format itself or in the platform that supports that format. From our business point of view, we see having to supply technology that supports both platforms across pretty much all markets. There are things that Metro will provide say a corporate user or environment, for example, and there are a number of things that the whole of the Metro initiative—not just the format, but the bits that go with it—will provide that PDF doesn't and will solve problems that PDF doesn't solve. And there are things that PDF provides that Metro won't.

PDF to become an open, ISO standard

Adobe Systems Inc. on Jan. 29 announced that it has released the full PDF (Portable Document Format) 1.7 specification to AIIM, the Association for Information and Image Management. AIIM, in turn, will start working on making PDF an ISO standard.

In this release, Adobe is opening up the full PDF 1.7 specification as defined in Adobe's PDF Reference Manual. According to Sarah Rosenbaum, Adobe's director of product management, this is the next logical step for Adobe with its PDF formats. In the 14 years since Adobe published the complete PDF specification in 1993, PDF has become a de facto global standard for secure and dependable information exchange and archival storage.

Since 1995, Adobe has participated in various working groups that develop technical specifications for publication by ISO, and worked within the ISO process to deliver specialized subsets of PDF as standards for specific industries and functions. Through these efforts, PDF/Archive (PDF/A) and PDF/Exchange (PDF/X) have already become ISO standards, and PDF for Engineering (PDF/E) and PDF for Universal Access (PDF/UA) are well on their ways to becoming ISO standards.

Additionally, PDF for Healthcare (PDF/H) is an AIIM proposed Best Practice Guide. AIIM already serves as the administrator for PDF/A, PDF/E, PDF/UA and PDF/H.

One reason Adobe is releasing the full PDF 1.7 specification at this time is that so many industry-specific versions of PDF already were ISO standards, Rosenbaum explained. "We see a lot of standards based on PDF format that are specific to industries or archiving. That's great, but for customers want to do documents in PDF, submitting the entire specification will make it easier for them," she said.

From here, a joint committee formed under AIIM will identify issues to be addressed, as well as proposed solutions with the proposed standard. This committee will then develop a draft document that will be presented to a Joint Working Group of ISO for development and approval as an international standard.

By opening up PDF in this manner, Adobe's customers will be more easily able to use PDFs in all their document management programs. Additionally, this move will also "provide an umbrella for the current alphabet soup of Adobe PDF standards," Rosenbaum added. Another factor in Adobe's decision was that with the rise of ODF (open document format), "there's a stronger market trend towards standardizing on open standards ... umbrella."

However, this move by Adobe does not, Rosenbaum asserted, have anything to do with Microsoft's PDF competitor: the Metro format, aka XPS (XML Paper Specification) print path.

XPS, which is now available in Vista, at one time was described as a "PDF killer." In Vista, XPS appears as a printer named "XPS Document Writer." If a user prints to this "printer" from an application, the resulting file will be an XPS Document. XPS is also supported in Office 2007.

Kevin Lynch, Adobe's chief software architect and senior vice president of company's platform business unit, stated: "Today's announcement is the next logical step in the evolution of PDF from de facto standard to a formal, de jure standard. By releasing the full PDF specification for ISO standardization, we are reinforcing our commitment to openness. As governments and organizations increasingly request open formats, maintenance of the PDF specification by an external and participatory organization will help continue to drive innovation and expand the rich PDF ecosystem that has evolved over the past 15 years."

Interestingly, this announcement by Adobe comes just one day prior to the Jan. 30 public release of both Vista and Office 2007 by Microsoft.


-- Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols

Related stories:

• Massachusetts reaffirms move to ODF
  
• Coming soon: ODF for MS Office
  
• ISO/IEC makes ODF an international standard
  
• ODF ranks swell
  
• New OASIS committee to push ODF
  
• Massachusetts verdict: MS Office formats out
  
• Adobe formally releases Adobe Reader 7.0 for Linux
  
• Adobe joins OSDL, aims for Linux desktop
  

Open-source Replicator? Home-built 3-D Printer Could Launch A Revolution, Engineers Say

Science Daily — The Altair 8800, introduced in the early 1970s, was the first computer you could build at home from a kit. It was crude, didn't do much, but many historians would say that it launched the desktop computer revolution.

Hod Lipson, assistant professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering, right, and engineering graduate student Evan Malone work with a "Fab@Home" machine in the Computational Synthesis Lab in Upson Hall Feb. 22. On the stage is a Lego tire duplicated by the Fab@Home. (Credit: Lindsay France/University Photography)

Hod Lipson, Cornell assistant professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering, thinks a little machine he calls a Fab@Home may have the same impact.

Some day, Lipson believes, every home will have a "fabber," a machine that replicates objects from plans supplied by a computer. Such devices could change how we acquire common products, he suggests: Instead of buying an iPod, you would download the plans over the Internet and the fabber would make one for you.

Such machines could evolve from the 3-D printers currently used by industrial engineers for "rapid prototyping." They design parts in computer-aided design programs and feed the designs to 3-D printers to make working plastic models. A 3-D printer has a small nozzle that scans back and forth across a surface, depositing tiny droplets of quick-hardening plastic. After each scan, the nozzle moves up a notch and scans again until it has built up the complete object, layer by layer. With multiple nozzles or a means of swapping supply cartridges, the machine can create objects made of many different materials. An electronic circuit, for example, can be made by combining an organic semiconductor, metallic inks and ceramic insulators.

Price tags for these machines average around $100,000, but you can build your own Fab@Home for about $2,300 worth of off-the-shelf parts. The prototype, designed by Evan Malone, a Ph.D. candidate in Lipson's Computational Synthesis Laboratory, is slower than the commercial models, and its resolution, or ability or produce fine detail, is lower, but people are finding practical -- and often unexpected -- uses for it.

Commercial machines can't be modified, which, Lipson says, impedes the progress of the technology, but the Fab@Home is "open source." Anyone can download the plans at http://www.fabathome.org, which is getting about 20,000 hits a day. The site also includes construction hints, ideas for applications, notes on the history of 3-D printing and discussion groups. People are invited and encouraged to make improvements, and a sort of cult is slowly forming.

So far, Lipson says, about a dozen people have said they are building one, and he knows of three that are actually up and running -- two at the University of Washington and one in Innsbruck, Austria. Lipson's group has built several and lent a couple to other researchers.

Some recent developments:

Biologists at Rockefeller University have been using a Fab@Home to deposit slime mold cells in various arrangements to see how the distribution influences their ability to form colony organisms.

The British magazine Auto Express suggests that fabbers could be used to make auto parts, allowing individuals to customize cars in ways that were previously available only to those with large manufacturing facilities.

While the usual expectation is to make solid objects out of epoxy or other quick-hardening plastic, the Fab@Home also can be used with plaster, Play-Doh, silicone, wax (to make forms for casting), low-melting-point metals and a variety of other materials.

Cornell graduate student Dan Periard and Jennifer Yao '08 have been loading commercial frosting into the machine to make cake decorations. It's not frivolous work, Lipson says: Because frosting dissolves in water it can provide temporary support for hollow structures and later be washed away.

A high school student in Kentucky is experimenting with a heated syringe to "fab" with chocolate.

Future fabbing machines will have to shift from one raw material to another in midstream and probably deposit material in three dimensions, not just layers, says Lipson. Research in his lab is taking early steps. Malone has built a machine that uses a rack of interchangeable cartridges to make devices out of several materials at once. So far, it has made a working battery, complete with outer case. Malone's long-range goal is to "print" a complete robot, including limbs, actuators, control circuitry and batteries.

Meanwhile, Lipson says, just as the Altair inspired tinkerers to add disk drives, keyboards and monitors and write operating systems and word processors, perhaps the Fab@Home will inspire new fabbing technology.

Note: This story has been adapted from a news release issued by Cornell University.

Net firms tackle Vista headache

Some new PC owners have faced problems getting online Windows Vista is causing problems for some new PC owners hooking up their machine to a broadband connection. Some old installation discs that simplify the task of configuring a PC for broadband have refused to work on machines loaded with Vista. One reader was warned by Virgin Media that it would be "weeks" before its software worked with Vista. Other net service firms have also admitted that the appearance of Vista has caused some hiccups for users. Disc delays Microsoft launched the consumer versions of Windows Vista on 30 January and anyone buying a PC since that date is likely to have it installed on their brand new machine. Many are thought to have suffered the same problem as Swansea-based Rob Evans who found that he could not use his existing Virgin Media account with his new PC from Tesco. After ringing Virgin for help he was told that Vista support may not be forthcoming for some time. A spokesman for Virgin Media, formerly NTL/Telewest, admitted that its discs did not yet work with Vista but added that Mr Evans was now using his broadband service. "We can get people online without the installation disc," he added. "It's not that it does not work, it's just the disc." The spokesman said that other net service firms were also known to be taking time to get to grips with Vista. Microsoft launched Windows Vista to consumers in January "It's such a big product that to train staff up on it fully and make sure all your services are tested and compliant takes time," he said. A spokesman for BT said: "I think we are now supporting it though we did have some issues with it." In particular, he said, Vista was conflicting with the Norton security software that BT sells with some of its broadband bundles. "That's now been ironed out," he added. The spokesman said BT had created a help page devoted to Vista to make it easier for people to get their PC connected. Net service firm Tiscali advises its users to back-up important data on their Vista PC before attempting to connect it to broadband. Andrew Ferguson, editor at Think Broadband, said: "I suspect Vista is going to break a lot of things as it makes some major changes to how things are done in Windows." "Many places aren't up to speed with Vista yet," he said.

Programming With the Java XML Digital Signature API

One of the significant new features of the Java Platform, Standard Edition 6 (Java SE 6) is the Java XML Digital Signature API. This API allows you to generate and validate XML signatures. XML signatures are a standard for digital signatures in the XML data format, and they allow you to authenticate and protect the integrity of data in XML and web service transactions. This article will give you an overview of XML signatures and show you how to use the API in your applications. Overview of XML Signatures What is a digital signature? RFC 2828 defines a digital signature as "a value computed with a cryptographic algorithm and appended to a data object in such a way that any recipient of the data can use the signature to verify the data's origin and integrity." JDK 6 includes a cryptographic digital signature API that is described in more detail in a lesson on the security trail in the Java Tutorial. An XML signature is a digital signature with several key properties. It defines a process and a format for generating digital signatures in the XML format, and it has many additional features. For instance, it allows you to sign more than one piece of data -- in binary or XML -- and to use any underlying cryptographic signature algorithm. An XML signature can sign arbitrary data, whether it is XML or binary. It can also sign only a portion or a subset of an XML document rather than the entire document. The data to be signed is identified by Uniform Resource Identifiers (URIs). XML signatures are often described as being of one or more of three types: A detached signature is over data that is external to the Signature element. This could be data outside of the document, such as a web page retrieved by way of HTTP, but it could also be data that is in the same document, such as a sibling element of the signature. An enveloping signature is over data that is inside the Signature element. An enveloped signature is a signature that is over data that contains the Signature element itself, such as the entire document. Perhaps the best way to describe an XML signature is to step through the contents of an example in detail. The example that this article will use is an enveloped XML signature generated over the contents of an XML document, a sample purchase order. The article will also use this sample in the subsequent sections on using the API. XML Sample 1 shows the contents of the purchase order before it is signed. XML Sample 1 Video Game 10.29 My Name One Network Drive Burlington MA United States 01803 The resulting enveloped XML signature, indented and formatted for readability, appears in XML Sample 2. XML Sample 2 Video Game 10.29 My Name One Network Drive Burlington MA United States 01803 tVicGh6V+8cHbVYFIU91o5+L3OQ= dJDHiGQMaKN8iPuWApAL57eVnxz2BQtyujwfPSgE7HyKoxYtoRB97ocxZ 8ZU440wHtE39ZwRGIjvwor3WfURxnIgnI1CChMXXwoGpHH//Zc0z4ejaz DuCNEq4Mm4OUVTiEVuwcWAOMkfDHaM82awYQiOGcwMbZe38UX0oPJ2DOE= CN=My Name,O=Test Certificates Inc.,C=US MIIB9zCCAWCgAwIBAgIERZwdkzANBgkqhkiG9w0BAQUFADBAMQswCQYD VQQGEwJVUzEfMB0GA1UEChMWVGVzdCBDZXJ0aWZpY2F0ZXMgSW5jLjEQ MA4GA1UEAxMHTXkgTmFtZTAeFw0wNzAxMDMyMTE4MTFaFw0zMTA4MjUy ... Note that the Signature element has been inserted inside the content that it is signing, thereby making it an enveloped signature. XML Sample 3 shows the SignedInfo element that contains the information that is actually signed XML Sample 3 tVicGh6V+8cHbVYFIU91o5+L3OQ= The CanonicalizationMethod element defines as a URI the algorithm used to canonicalize the SignedInfo element before it is signed or validated. Canonicalization is the process of converting XML content to a physical representation, called the canonical form, in order to eliminate subtle changes that can invalidate a signature over that data. Canonicalization is necessary due to the nature of XML and the way it is parsed by different processors and intermediaries, which can change the data in such a way that the signature is no longer valid but the signed data is still logically equivalent. Canonicalization eliminates these permissible syntactic variances by converting the XML to a canonical form before generating or validating the signature. The SignatureMethod element defines as a URI the digital signature algorithm used to generate the signature, in this case the PKCS#1 RSA-SHA1 algorithm as described in RFC 2437. One or more Reference elements identify the data that is signed. Each Reference element identifies the data by way of a URI. The example in XML Sample 3 contains a single Reference element, and the URI is the empty String, "", which indicates the root of the document -- in other words, the whole document. The Reference URIs could also point to external data, such as "http://java.sun.com", or to references within the same document, such as "#purchaseOrder". The optional Transforms element contains a list of one or more Transform elements, each of which describes a transformation algorithm used to transform the data before it is digested and signed, or validated. This example contains one Transform element for the enveloped transform algorithm. The enveloped transform is required for enveloped signatures so that the Signature element itself is removed before calculating the signature value. Otherwise, the signature would include itself in the data to be signed, which is not correct. Another example of a useful transform algorithm is the XPath Filter transform, which allows you to specify an XPath expression that selects a subset of nodes to be signed. The DigestMethod element defines as a URI the algorithm used to digest the data, in this case, SHA1. The DigestValue element contains the actual base64-encoded digest value. The SignatureValue element contains the base64-encoded signature value of the signature over the SignedInfo element, as XML Sample 4 shows. XML Sample 4 dJDHiGQMaKN8iPuWApAL57eVnxz2BQtyujwfPSgE7HyKoxYtoRB97ocxZ 8ZU440wHtE39ZwRGIjvwor3WfURxnIgnI1CChMXXwoGpHH//Zc0z4ejaz DuCNEq4Mm4OUVTiEVuwcWAOMkfDHaM82awYQiOGcwMbZe38UX0oPJ2DOE= The optional KeyInfo element contains information about the key that is needed to validate the signature, as in XML Sample 5. XML Sample 5 CN=My Name,O=Test Certificates Inc.,C=US MIIB9zCCAWCgAwIBAgIERZwdkzANBgkqhkiG9w0BAQUFADBAMQswCQYD VQQGEwJVUzEfMB0GA1UEChMWVGVzdCBDZXJ0aWZpY2F0ZXMgSW5jLjEQ MA4GA1UEAxMHTXkgTmFtZTAeFw0wNzAxMDMyMTE4MTFaFw0zMTA4MjUy ... The KeyInfo element can contain various kinds of content, such as X.509 certificates and Pretty Good Privacy (PGP) key identifiers. See the KeyInfo section of the XML Signature standard for more information on KeyInfo and the types of information it may contain. In this example, KeyInfo contains an X509Data element that contains an X509SubjectName element identifying the subject Distinguished Name of the signer's X.509 certificate and an X509Certificate element containing the signer's base64-encoded certificate. This certificate contains the public key needed to validate the signature. The KeyInfo section of the XML Signature Recommendation provides more information on the different KeyInfo types. It is important to note that the XML signature standard does not define how the recipient establishes trust in the key that is needed to validate the signature. The KeyInfo element is merely a collection of information that the recipient can use to help find and subsequently establish trust in that key. API Architecture The Java XML Digital Signature API was defined under the Java Community Process program as JSR 105. The API is designed to support all of the required or recommended features of the W3C Recommendation for XML-Signature Syntax and Processing. The API is based on the Java Cryptography Service Provider Architecture. This allows you to develop a service provider implementation of the API. Service providers implement a specific XML mechanism that identifies the XML-parsing mechanism that the implementation uses. The service provider in Sun's implementation of Java SE 6 supports the Document Object Model (DOM) mechanism. See the XML Digital Signature API overview for more information on service providers. The API contains six new packages, as Table 1 indicates. Table 1. New Packages in the Java XML Digital Signature API Package Contents javax.xml.crypto Contains common classes that are used to perform XML cryptographic operations. javax.xml.crypto.dom Contains DOM-specific classes for the javax.xml.crypto package. javax.xml.crypto.dsig Contains classes that represent the core elements defined in the XML digital signature specification. Of primary significance is the XMLSignature class, which allows you to sign and validate an XML digital signature. The XMLSignatureFactory class is an abstract factory that is used to create objects that implement these interfaces. javax.xml.crypto.dsig.dom Contains DOM-specific classes for the javax.xml.crypto.dsig package. javax.xml.crypto.dsig.keyinfo Contains classes that represent the KeyInfo structures defined in the XML digital signature recommendation. The KeyInfoFactory class is an abstract factory that is used to create objects that implement these interfaces. javax.xml.crypto.dsig.spec Contains classes representing input parameters for the digest, signature, transform, or canonicalization algorithms used in the processing of XML signatures. Generating an XML Signature This section will show you how to use the API to generate an XML signature over the contents of the PurchaseOrder element that the article introduced earlier. For this example, you will use DOM to parse the XML data that you will be signing. Code Sample 1 shows a few of the key steps in generating an XML signature: Code Sample 1 // Create a DOM XMLSignatureFactory that will be used to // generate the enveloped signature. XMLSignatureFactory fac = XMLSignatureFactory.getInstance("DOM"); // Create a Reference to the enveloped document (in this case, // you are signing the whole document, so a URI of "" signifies // that, and also specify the SHA1 digest algorithm and // the ENVELOPED Transform. Reference ref = fac.newReference ("", fac.newDigestMethod(DigestMethod.SHA1, null), Collections.singletonList (fac.newTransform (Transform.ENVELOPED, (TransformParameterSpec) null)), null, null); // Create the SignedInfo. SignedInfo si = fac.newSignedInfo (fac.newCanonicalizationMethod (CanonicalizationMethod.INCLUSIVE, (C14NMethodParameterSpec) null), fac.newSignatureMethod(SignatureMethod.RSA_SHA1, null), Collections.singletonList(ref)); The first step in the generation of an XML signature is to instantiate an XMLSignatureFactory mechanism. The getInstance method of the XMLSignatureFactory class looks for a service provider that supports DOM and returns an XMLSignatureFactory implementation from the provider with the highest preference. The XMLSignatureFactory is a key class in the API and, as shown in Code Sample 1, is used to assemble the different components of the XMLSignature. The second block of code in Code Sample 1 creates the Reference object, which identifies the data that will be digested and signed. The Reference object is assembled by creating and passing as parameters each of its components: the URI, the DigestMethod, and a list of Transforms. The third block of code in Code Sample 1 creates the SignedInfo object that the signature is calculated over. Like the Reference object, the SignedInfo object is assembled by creating and passing as parameters each of its components: the CanonicalizationMethod, the SignatureMethod, and a list of References. Code Sample 2 shows the steps involved in constructing the KeyInfo object. Code Sample 2 // Load the KeyStore and get the signing key and certificate. KeyStore ks = KeyStore.getInstance("JKS"); ks.load(new FileInputStream("mykeystore.jks"), "changeit".toCharArray()); KeyStore.PrivateKeyEntry keyEntry = (KeyStore.PrivateKeyEntry) ks.getEntry ("mykey", new KeyStore.PasswordProtection("changeit".toCharArray())); X509Certificate cert = (X509Certificate) keyEntry.getCertificate(); // Create the KeyInfo containing the X509Data. KeyInfoFactory kif = fac.getKeyInfoFactory(); List x509Content = new ArrayList(); x509Content.add(cert.getSubjectX500Principal().getName()); x509Content.add(cert); X509Data xd = kif.newX509Data(x509Content); KeyInfo ki = kif.newKeyInfo(Collections.singletonList(xd)); For this example, the signing key and certificate are stored in a KeyStore file. The first block of code retrieves the signer's X.509 certificate from the keystore. The second block of code creates the KeyInfo object, using a KeyInfoFactory, which is a factory for assembling KeyInfo objects. The KeyInfo object consists of an X509Data object containing the certificate and the subject Distinguished Name. Now you instantiate the document to be signed, create the XMLSignature object, and generate the signature, as Code Sample 3 shows. Code Sample 3 // Instantiate the document to be signed. DocumentBuilderFactory dbf = DocumentBuilderFactory.newInstance(); dbf.setNamespaceAware(true); Document doc = dbf.newDocumentBuilder().parse (new FileInputStream("purchaseOrder.xml")); // Create a DOMSignContext and specify the RSA PrivateKey and // location of the resulting XMLSignature's parent element. DOMSignContext dsc = new DOMSignContext (keyEntry.getPrivateKey(), doc.getDocumentElement()); // Create the XMLSignature, but don't sign it yet. XMLSignature signature = fac.newXMLSignature(si, ki); // Marshal, generate, and sign the enveloped signature. signature.sign(dsc); The Document now contains the Signature element. You can verify this by using the JAXP Transformer API to dump the contents of the document to a file, as Code Sample 4 shows. Code Sample 4 // Output the resulting document. OutputStream os = new FileOutputStream("signedPurchaseOrder.xml"); TransformerFactory tf = TransformerFactory.newInstance(); Transformer trans = tf.newTransformer(); trans.transform(new DOMSource(doc), new StreamResult(os)); Validating an XML Signature You will now learn to use the API to validate an XML signature over the contents of the PurchaseOrder element that you just signed. Code Sample 5 shows the key steps in validating an XML signature. Code Sample 5 // Find Signature element. NodeList nl = doc.getElementsByTagNameNS(XMLSignature.XMLNS, "Signature"); if (nl.getLength() == 0) { throw new Exception("Cannot find Signature element"); } // Create a DOMValidateContext and specify a KeySelector // and document context. DOMValidateContext valContext = new DOMValidateContext (new X509KeySelector(), nl.item(0)); // Unmarshal the XMLSignature. XMLSignature signature = fac.unmarshalXMLSignature(valContext); // Validate the XMLSignature. boolean coreValidity = signature.validate(valContext); First, you must find the location of the Signature element that you wish to validate. One way to do this is to use the DOM getElementsByTagNameNS method as shown in Code Sample 5. The second block of code creates a DOMValidateContext object containing a KeySelector object and a reference to the Signature element. The purpose of the KeySelector object is to obtain the public key using the information in the KeyInfo element and hand it back to be used as the validation key. The next section will discuss KeySelectors in more detail. The last two lines of code unmarshal and validate the signature. The validate method returns true if the signature is valid and false if it is invalid. If the signature is invalid, some additional code is necessary to determine the cause of the failure, as Code Sample 6 shows. Code Sample 6 // Check core validation status. if (coreValidity == false) { System.err.println("Signature failed core validation"); boolean sv = signature.getSignatureValue().validate(valContext); System.out.println("signature validation status: " + sv); if (sv == false) { // Check the validation status of each Reference. Iterator i = signature.getSignedInfo().getReferences().iterator(); for (int j=0; i.hasNext(); j++) { boolean refValid = ((Reference) i.next()).validate(valContext); System.out.println("ref["+j+"] validity status: " + refValid); } } } else { System.out.println("Signature passed core validation"); } The code in Code Sample 6 determines the cause of an invalid signature as one of two possibilities: An invalid signature. The cryptographic verification of the signature failed. This can be caused by an incorrect validation key or a change to the SignedInfo contents since the signature was generated. An invalid reference or references. The verification of the digest of a reference failed. This can be caused by a change to the referenced data since the signature was generated. Before moving on to the next section, it is important to note that transforms can change the contents of the data that is referenced before it is signed. Therefore, it may be important to show the contents of exactly what has been signed to the validating user. You can do this by enabling reference caching in the DOMValidateContext object before validating the signature and invoking the getDigestInputStream method of the Reference objects contained in the signature, as Code Sample 7 shows. Code Sample 7 valContext.setProperty("javax.xml.crypto.dsig.cacheReference", Boolean.TRUE); // Unmarshal the XMLSignature. XMLSignature signature = fac.unmarshalXMLSignature(valContext); // Validate the XMLSignature. boolean coreValidity = signature.validate(valContext); Iterator i = signature.getSignedInfo().getReferences().iterator(); for (int j=0; i.hasNext(); j++) { InputStream is = ((Reference) i.next()).getDigestInputStream(); // Display the data. } These and other security concerns are discussed in more detail in the security considerations section of the XML Signature Recommendation. The KeySelector Class A KeySelector is an abstract class that is responsible for finding and returning a key using the data contained in a KeyInfo object. In Code Sample 5, you passed an X509KeySelector object, which is a very simple implementation of KeySelector that looks for and returns a public key of an X.509 certificate, as Code Sample 8 shows. Code Sample 8 public class X509KeySelector extends KeySelector { public KeySelectorResult select(KeyInfo keyInfo, KeySelector.Purpose purpose, AlgorithmMethod method, XMLCryptoContext context) throws KeySelectorException { Iterator ki = keyInfo.getContent().iterator(); while (ki.hasNext()) { XMLStructure info = (XMLStructure) ki.next(); if (!(info instanceof X509Data)) continue; X509Data x509Data = (X509Data) info; Iterator xi = x509Data.getContent().iterator(); while (xi.hasNext()) { Object o = xi.next(); if (!(o instanceof X509Certificate)) continue; final PublicKey key = ((X509Certificate)o).getPublicKey(); // Make sure the algorithm is compatible // with the method. if (algEquals(method.getAlgorithm(), key.getAlgorithm())) { return new KeySelectorResult() { public Key getKey() { return key; } }; } } } throw new KeySelectorException("No key found!"); } static boolean algEquals(String algURI, String algName) { if ((algName.equalsIgnoreCase("DSA") && algURI.equalsIgnoreCase(SignatureMethod.DSA_SHA1)) || (algName.equalsIgnoreCase("RSA") && algURI.equalsIgnoreCase(SignatureMethod.RSA_SHA1))) { return true; } else { return false; } } } This is a very simple implementation of a KeySelector that returns the public key from the first X.509 certificate it finds in the X509Data. It is for demonstration purposes only and should not be used in real-world applications. A more complete X.509 key selector implementation would check other types of X509Data and establish trust in the validation key by using a keystore of trusted keys, or by finding and validating a certificate chain from a trust anchor to the certificate containing the public key. See the Java PKI Programmer's Guide for more information about trust anchors and Java APIs that you can use to establish trust in keys. Logging and Debugging The Java SE 6 implementation of the XML Signature API has extensive logging support that, when enabled, will provide you with additional information to help you debug validation failures. The log messages use the JDK logging facility, java.util.logging. To enable XML signature logging, you must first configure the logging facility so that the XML signature-logging messages are emitted. You can do this by editing the JRE's default logging.properties file directly, or by creating your own file and setting it with the java.util.logging.config.file property, for example: java -Djava.util.logging.config.file=logging.properties ... where logging.properties contains the following code: handlers= java.util.logging.ConsoleHandler .level= INFO java.util.logging.ConsoleHandler.level = FINER java.util.logging.ConsoleHandler.formatter = java.util.logging.SimpleFormatter org.jcp.xml.dsig.internal.level = FINER com.sun.org.apache.xml.internal.security.level = FINER This will emit log messages of level FINER and higher to the console. All other components will emit log messages of level INFO and higher. This article will not describe every log message in detail, but Table 2 lists some of the most helpful messages. Table 2: Some Useful Log Messages Log Message Explanation [java] FINER: Pre-digested input: ... This message displays the content of the referenced data just before it was digested. This is useful for debugging reference validation failures. [java] FINE: Expected digest: ... [java] FINE: Actual digest: ... These messages display the expected and actual base64-encoded digest values of a Reference element. This is also useful for debugging reference validation failures. [java] FINE: Canonicalized SignedInfo: ... This message displays the canonicalized SignedInfo element before it is signed. This is useful for debugging canonicalization and signature verification failures. Conclusion The purpose of the article was to get you started with using the API and to show you the basic steps in generating and validating an XML signature. To learn more about the Java XML Digital Signature API, consult the documentation and references in the "For More Information" section. The Java XML Digital Signature API is available in Java SE 6, as well as in the GlassFish project. Project WSIT, also known as Project Tango, uses the Java XML Signature API to implement the Web Services Security (WSS) specification. For More Information Java XML Signatures: This article discusses XML digital signatures and the Java XML Signature API and discusses ways to speed up performance using cryptographic hardware accelerators. JSR 105 Java Community Process Java XML Digital Signature Overview and Tutorial Java XML Digital Signature API Specification Java PKI Programmer's Guide Sean Mullan's Blog

Install XAMPP for easy, integrated development

Install XAMPP for easy, integrated development Middleware stacks like this could revolutionize open source, multi-tier software development

Level: Introductory Nils-Erik Frantzell (nfrantze@ucsc.edu)Computer Science Department, UC Santa Cruz 30 Nov 2004 Open source stacks such as XAMPP from Apache Friends are simplifying open source development by making it easier to write and distribute applications in a stable and standardized environment. Traditionally, AMPP -- Apache, MySQL, PHP, and Perl -- have all been installed and configured as separate products. The trend of combining them into integrated middleware stacks promises to make open source development more competitive with J2EE™ application development, at least for low-end applications. In this article, you'll learn how to install, configure, and back up XAMPP on Mandrake Linux™ 10.0 and also how to configure and administer XAMPP, as well as how to install your own applications in an XAMPP environment. The advent of Java 2 Enterprise Edition™ dramatically changed the software landscape by providing an integrated middleware stack that greatly simplified the task of writing and deploying Java™ applications. For a while, the open source community was left behind because it lacked a similar integrated architecture. Recently, with the introduction of integrated open source stacks like XAMPP from Apache Friends, this situation has started to change. These stacks are still quite simple and rudimentary when compared with J2EE, but they are nevertheless an important step on the way to fuller systems integration. PHP 5.0 (which makes PHP fully object oriented) is a good indicator that this trend will accelerate. The focus of this article is on one of the integrated, open source stacks: XAMPP from Apache Friends. Introducing XAMPP XAMPP is a full-featured AMPP (Apache MySQL, PHP, Perl) package that is one of the few non-commercial AMPP middleware stacks available on Linux. With its tight integration, XAMPP makes it possible to run anything from a personal home page to a full-featured production site (though only for development purposes; XAMPP is not meant to be used on a production server due to security issues). XAMPP really shines in the following areas: It is easy to install and set up. It contains a number of useful packages that make it easy to do things like generate traffic reports and accelerate PHP content. It has been thoroughly tested on the SUSE, Red Hat, Mandrake, and Debian Linux distributions, as well as on Windows® and Solaris. For this article, we will install XAMPP under Mandrake Linux 10.0. Let's start by looking at the default packages that come with XAMPP. Basic packages Basic packages include system, programming, and server software: Apache, the famous Web server MySQL, an excellent, free, open source database PHP, the programming language (in versions 4.3.8 and 5.0.1 at the time of this writing) Perl, the programming language ProFTPD, an FTP server OpenSSL, for secure sockets layer support Graphics packages XAMPP includes the following graphics-related packages: GD, the "Graphics Draw" library libpng, the official PNG reference library libjpeg, the official JPEG reference library ncurses, the character graphics library Database packages And what would an integrated stack be without some database packages such as: gdbm, the GNU implementation of the standard UNIX® dbm library SQLite, an extremely small, zero-configuration SQL database engine FreeTDS, a database library that gives UNIX and Linux programs the ability to talk to Microsoft® SQL and Sybase databases XML packages For XML development, XAMPP includes the following: expat, an XML parser library Salbotron, an XML toolkit libxml, an XML C parser and toolkit for GNOME PHP packages For PHP development, XAMPP includes the following: PEAR, the PHP library A pdf class that generates dynamic PDF documents with PHP TURCK MMCache, a PHP performance enhancer Other packages And finally, XAMPP demonstrates its versatility by including the following packages: zlib, a compression library mod_perl, which embeds a persistent Perl interpreter in Apache gettext, a toolset that assists GNU packages in producing multi-lingual messages mcrypt, an encryption program Ming, a Flash (SWF) output library Freetype2, a software font engine IMAP C-Client, a mail program API Now let's talk about installing XAMPP.

Use this link for more information

(http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/linux/library/l-xampp/)

Toyota plans ultra-inexpensive car

Cheap Wheels
22 January 2007 11:36:54
Toyota plans ultra-inexpensive car: report
TOKYO, Jan 22, 2007 (AFP) - Toyota Motor Corp. plans to build a low-cost car undercutting Renault's emerging-market Logan through a "radical" rethink in design and production, the president of the fast-growing Japanese automaker said.

"The focus is on low-cost technology," Toyota president Katsuaki Watanabe told Britain's Financial Times newspaper in an interview published Monday. He declined to set a price for a low-cost car but said it would be "at least" less than the Logan. Renault has started production of the Logan, which will cost from 5,000 euros (6,200 dollars) on up, touted as a budget model for consumers in emerging economies such as China and Russia that conforms to European standards. Watanabe said that Toyota could slash the price by targetting costs throughout production. "Everything from design to production methods will be radically changed and we are thinking of a really ultra-low-cost way of designing, using ultra-low-cost materials, even developing new materials if necessary," he said. The plan would create a new challenge to struggling US automakers.

Toyota is set this year to overtake General Motors as the world's largest automaker. The Japanese automaker has cashed in by pioneering environmentally friendly hybrid cars and has also seen success with its luxury Lexus line.

Use this link for more information


(http://www.lbo.lk/fullstory.php?newsID=1796333079&no_view=1&SEARCH_TERM=35 )

Jonathan Robie's XQuery Blog: XSLT vs. XQuery

XSLT vs. XQuery

About once a week, someone asks me a question about the relationship between XSLT and XQuery - is XQuery a better language than XSLT? when would I use each language in preference to the other? is there really any fundamental reason that XSLT can't be optimized for large data stores just like XQuery? which language is better for writing really large applications?

Here are some of the differences between the two languages.

• XQuery was designed to be optimizable for large data stores. XSLT was designed for the kinds of transformations used in stylesheets - it has come to be used much more broadly, but nobody has done a good job of translating it to efficient SQL or implementing it to work efficiently on native XML databases. You can argue whether the same kind of thing could be done in XSLT, but realistically, it's unlikely that anyone will ever do that.

• XQuery is typically easier to use for things that feel like "queries"; XSLT is easier for things that feel like transformations, especially formatting-oriented transformations on recursive data structures like those found in documents.

• XQuery has a keyword-oriented syntax that is more like other commonly used languages than the XML-based syntax of XSLT. I don't think this is a big deal, but some programmers seem to have a hard time getting past XSLT syntax.

I have heard Mike Kay suggest that XSLT is much better for designing very large queries, and heard Jason Hunter suggest that these kinds of queries are much easier in XQuery. Personally, I am more comfortable writing very large XQueries than very large stylesheets, but I've also written a lot more large queries than large stylesheets.

There are XSLT zealots and XQuery zealots who insist that one of these two languages is best. I use both languages, and like both languages. But XQuery is clearly the language that was designed for large data stores, or for the kind of implementation that translates a query to other query languages such as SQL.

By the way, Mike Kay's useful XTech 2005 paper examines these questions in much more depth.

O'Reilly -- Top Ten Java and XSLT Tips

Top Ten Java and XSLT Tips

by Eric M. Burke
08/29/2001

My new book, Java and XSLT, examines techniques for using XSLT with Java (of course!). This article highlights ten tips that I feel are important, although limiting the list to ten items only scratches the surface of what is possible. Most of these tips focus on the combination of Java and XSLT, rather than on specific XSLT (Extensible Stylesheet Transformations) techniques. For more detailed information, there are pointers to other valuable resources at the end of this article.

The basics of XSL transformations are pretty simple: one or more XSLT stylesheets contain instructions that define how to transform XML data into some other format. XSLT processors do the actual transformations; Sun Microsystems' Java API for XML Processing (JAXP) provides a standard Java interface to various processors. Here is some sample code that performs an XSL transformation using the JAXP API:

import javax.xml.transform.Source;
import javax.xml.transform.Transformer;
import javax.xml.transform.TransformerFactory;
import javax.xml.transform.stream.StreamSource;
import javax.xml.transform.stream.StreamResult;
import java.io.*;

public class Transform {

   /**
    * Performs an XSLT transformation, sending the results
    * to System.out.
    */
   public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception {
       if (args.length != 2) {
           System.err.println(
               "Usage: java Transform [xmlfile] [xsltfile]");
           System.exit(1);
       }

       File xmlFile = new File(args[0]);
       File xsltFile = new File(args[1]);

       // JAXP reads data using the Source interface
       Source xmlSource = new StreamSource(xmlFile);
       Source xsltSource = new StreamSource(xsltFile);

       // the factory pattern supports different XSLT processors
       TransformerFactory transFact =
               TransformerFactory.newInstance();
       Transformer trans = transFact.newTransformer(xsltSource);

       trans.transform(xmlSource, new StreamResult(System.out));
   }
}

You can click here to download a small ZIP file containing this example, along with an XSLT stylesheet and XML data file. The included README file explains how to compile and run this example.

Use this link for get more information

(http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/oreilly/java/news/javaxslt_0801.html)

Make choices at runtime with XSLT parameters

Make choices at runtime with XSLT parameters Use parameters and conditionals in your style sheets

Level: Introductory Nicholas Chase (nicholas@nicholaschase.com), President, Chase and Chase, Inc. 01 Aug 2002 Extensible Stylesheet Langauage Transformations provide the ability to perform sophisticated manipulation of data as it is transformed from one form to another. You can increase their capabilites even further through the use of parameters that can be specified at runtime. This tip takes a basic look at using parameters and conditional statements in an XSLT style sheet. Note:This tip uses the Xalan XSL Transformation engine, but any XSLT processor will do. It assumes that you are familiar with XSL transformations. Use this link for get more information (http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/xml/library/x-tipxsltrun/index.html)