The Xbox 360 and the upcoming Kinect are the future of Microsoft? Wired seems to think so. Craig Mundie, chief research and strategy officer at Microsoft, told Computerworld on Thursday that Kinect “portends a revolution in the way people will interact with computers.” Bill Gates suggested something very similar at the D5 conference in 2007: The real transformation of the desktop metaphor for the PC would come through innovations in three-dimensional imaging. Comments

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Why Xbox Might Be Microsoft’s Future

The Xbox 360 and the upcoming Kinect are the future of Microsoft? Wired seems to think so. Craig Mundie, chief research and strategy officer at Microsoft, told Computerworld on Thursday that Kinect “portends a revolution in the way people will interact with computers.” Bill Gates suggested something very similar at the D5 conference in 2007: The real transformation of the desktop metaphor for the PC would come through innovations in three-dimensional imaging. Comments

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Why Xbox Might Be Microsoft’s Future

Oh, those crazy Swedish. First it was the meatballs and now wearable computers. Martin Magnusson, a Swedish researcher and entrepreneur, has taken the first step and created a wearable computer that can be slung across the body. This redifines the word nerd…..and is quite the fashion statement A Beagleboard running Angstrom Linux and a Plexgear mini USB hub that drives the Bluetooth adapter and display forms the rest of this rather simple machine. Four 2700 mAh AA batteries are used to power the USB hub. Magnusson has used a foldable Nokia keyboard for input and is piping internet connectivity through Bluetooth tethering to an iPhone in his pocket.

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DIY Wearable Computer Turns You Into a Cyborg

Intel Corporation today announced an important advance in the quest to use light beams to replace the use of electrons to carry data in and around computers. The company has developed a research prototype representing the world’s first silicon-based optical data connection with integrated lasers. The link can move data over longer distances and many times faster than today’s copper technology; up to 50 gigabits of data per second. This is the equivalent of an entire HD movie being transmitted each second. Today computer components are connected to each other using copper cables or traces on circuit boards. Due to the signal degradation that comes with using metals such as copper to transmit data, these cables have a limited maximum length. This limits the design of computers, forcing processors, memory and other components to be placed just inches from each other.

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Intel Milestone Confirms Light Beams Can Replace Electronic Signals

Black Hat starts on Wednesday (DefCon starts Friday), anyone here planning on attending these events? Internet warriors are gathering this week to explore chinks in the armors of computers, bank teller machines, mobile phones, power grids, and other “smart” devices intrinsic to modern life. Comments

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Internet Warriors Hone Skills at Black Hat – DefCon

The country know for being a leader in the tech world has a low-tech underbelly? Really? That just doesn’t seem right, I thought everyone from Japan was tech savvy. Police stations without computers, 30-year-old “on hold” tapes grinding out tinny renditions of Greensleeves, ATMs that close when the bank does, suspect car engineering, and kerosene heaters but no central heating. Comments

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Japan Is Still Low-Tech?

Mozilla has put the smack down on Mozilla Sniffer, a password stealing app that has been making the rounds. The company says they are implementing a new security model to prevent this from happening in the future. The software, called Mozilla Sniffer, had been downloaded about 1,800 times in the approximately five weeks it was available on addons.mozilla.org, Mozilla reported in a blog post on Tuesday. The blocklist will prompt the add-on to be uninstalled for computers running the program. Users who installed it should change their passwords. Mozilla Sniffer intercepts login data and sends it to a remote server that appeared to be down, according to the blog post. Comments

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Mozilla Disables Password-Stealing Firefox Add-On

I’ll tell you what, you’ve got to have a huge set of brass balls to steal thousands of laptops from the U.S. Special Operations Command. Then again, I don’t have nay pity for the thieves when SOCOM comes looking to get their por….ummm, laptops back. Thousands of laptops have been stolen from the Florida office of a private contractor for the U.S. military’s Special Operations Command. Surveillance cameras caught up to seven people loading the computers into two trucks for nine hours. Comments

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Thousands of Laptops Stolen During Nine-Hour Heist

The Wikimedia Foundation is trying to develop ways to enhance Wikipedia through the use of Semantic Technology. That means making the 15+ million pages of information on Wiki understandable to computers as well as humans. This would allow for more automation in updating/maintaining articles and require less editorial work. The main aspect, though, would be for applications to be able to retrieve and manipulate all of that knowledge for specific uses. “Just being able to reuse that data within Wikipedia would be a big thing,” says Yaron Koren Comments

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Wikipedia and the Semantic Web

Working for the Transportation Security Administration sucks a little more now. The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) is blocking certain websites from the federal agency’s computers, including halting access by staffers to any Internet pages that contain a “controversial opinion,” according to an internal email obtained by CBS News. Comments

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TSA to Block "Controversial Opinion" on the Web