Faceprints As Symbology

University researchers developed the URxD face recognition software that uses a three-dimensional snapshot of a person's face to create a unique biometric identifier. Image Credit: University of Houston via NetworkWorld

Faceprints As Symbology

Who needs a number when you have a face? That’s what we say here at Symblogogy!

Symbologies such as barcodes are rapidly being replaced by other pattern identifiers found through digital conversion.

As noted here a few months ago, ColorCode/ColorZip created a new type of symbology to be used for advertisers that takes a picture of an Ad an and converts it to a type of QR Code based symbology. The purpose here would allow the user access to additional information by taking a photograph with ones phone on the product Ad and digital image converted.

Here in Houston, they have created a different approach to digital conversion and identification. A webcam captures a continuous video stream which is used to detect the face of an individual and converts the images captured to a unique identifier … just like a barcode on a keyfob.

It will only be a matter of time when one can step up in line at the supermarket and have ones loyalty points automatically accrue and discounts awarded through photographic digital conversion as symbology access to database information capture and update.

This from NetworkWorld -

Forget your PIN? Use your face
Submitted by Layer 8 on Wed, 08/01/2007 - 11:49am.

Face recognition as a unique biometric is growing slowly in certain corporate and consumer applications, but researchers at the University of Houston (UH) are trying to make the technology far more ubiquitous and secure: they want it to replace the dozens of personal identification numbers (PIN), passwords and credit card numbers everyone uses every day.

The UH designed and built a prototype field-deployable 3D face recognition system that consists of a 3dMDTM optical scanner using a 1-pod configuration, which is connected to a PC.

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When the subject is facing the camera and remains relatively still for more than two seconds, the system triggers the optical scanner and the 3D data of the individual's face are captured. The system can either enroll the subject into the database, or perform a scenario-specific task. In an identification scenario, the system will display the closest 5 datasets to the operator. In a verification scenario, the system will determine whether the subject is who they claim to be, based on a preset distance threshold, UH says.

The system determines not only the characteristics of each face, but also whether the person is wearing glasses, allowing for a practical system which offers high accuracy. So far, face recognition methods have focused on appearance - capturing, representing, and matching facial characteristics as they appear on two-dimensional images in the visible spectrum. This is quite challenging to machine recognition because such characteristics vary with orientation, age, habits (beard etc)), and illumination. Instead, the UH system uses three-dimensional information.

The system was highly rated by The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in its annual Face Recognition Vendor Test (FRVT) 2006 and the Iris Challenge Evaluation (ICE) 2006. NIST said the FRVT looks at face recognition from high-resolution still images and three-dimensional (3D) face images, and measures performance for still images taken under controlled and uncontrolled illumination. Face and iris are two biometrics that have been developed over the last 20 years. Face recognition is a vibrant area of biometrics with active research and commercial efforts.

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"Remembering dozens of personal identification numbers and passwords is not the solution to identity theft. PINs and passwords are not only inconvenient to memorize, but also are impractical to safeguard. In essence, they merely tie two pieces of information together; once the secret is compromised, the rest follows. The solution is to be able to tie your private information to your person in a way that cannot be compromised," said Eckhard Pfeiffer Professor of Computer Science and director of the UH Computational Biomedicine Laboratory.

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NIST last year released the Multimodal Biometric Application Resource Kit (MBARK), an open source middleware package that enables you to plug in biometric sensors from different manufacturers. The kit also contains templates and sample apps. All the details and the software can be downloaded from the NIST Web site.
Read All Here>>

In London; If You Smoke .. It's About The Print

London skyline over the Thames - Image Credit: UK Biometrics

In London; If You Smoke .. It's About The Print

At the beginning of this month (July, 2007), England initiated its new law that bans smoking within the confines of a public place.

In England, this really means that PUBS have to stop drinkers from smoking inside their establishments, yet keep them around to have another pint! The question becomes, how does one implement an entrance strategy that allow patrons to come in, go out to have a “fag”, and re-enter again without much hassle? … the answer? … Biometrics, of course!

Access systems used for nightclubs - Image Credit: UK Biometrics

Excerpted from Secure ID –

UK's ban on smoking boosts biometric use... at night clubs
Secure ID - Monday, July 16 2007

Smoking inside public places was banned within England starting July first, leaving bars and clubs struggling to secure their entries but still allow for smokers to be let out for a cigarette. So, some night clubs are experimenting with biometric programs to ensure that people can re-enter easily.

Current ticket, swipe card or hand-stamp identification methods can easily be abused since they can be swapped outside the venue, putting owners at risk of allowing under age drinkers or known trouble makers entrance.
Read All>>

Access control image detection devices - Image Credit: UK Biometrics

Further, this from Securezine.com -

Smoking Ban Provides Boost for Biometrics Ltd

The smoking ban which came into force on the 1st of July is providing a welcome boost for Newcastle upon Tyne based, fingerprint entry specialist UK Biometrics Ltd, as nightclubs seek a secure way to allow customers out of their venue for a cigarette.

The city centre location of many nightclubs means installing an outdoor smoking area is not an option. Current ticket, swipe card or hand-stamp identification methods are open to abuse since they can be swapped outside the venue, putting owners at risk of allowing under age drinkers or known trouble makers entrance.

With the UK Biometrics Membership System, developed on Tyneside, nightclub management know that the person re-entering the club after a cigarette break is the person who originally paid to enter.

UK Biometrics Managing Director Matthew James says;

'Allowing exit and re-entry to a venue has always been a feature of our system, but we noticed a massive increase in interest when we attended BAR07 exhibition at Earls Court in early June this year. Since then we have been demonstrating the system to venue owners and managers throughout the UK. Our ability to allow people to leave for a smoke and re-enter is a welcome catalyst to sales'.

The first UK nightclub to install a biometric access system was Blu Bambu in Newcastle‚s Bigg Market in April 2005 when it was haled by Newcastle City Commander, Chief Superintendent Chris Matchell as 'an absolutely brilliant idea'. Since then the system has been installed in clubs and venues throughout the UK.

Customers bring quality ID (passport, driving licence) only once, register their fingerprint on the system, and thereafter staff know exactly who they are.

No actual fingerprints are stored so concerns over human rights can be allayed. Instead the system recognizes key points on the fingerprint and converts these into data which is then encrypted and stored.
Reference Here>>

ID Gel Tape Approach Grabs More Than Just Fingerprint

Gelatin tape can be used to collect fingerprints and "chemically photograph" them using highly sensitive instruments for chemical analysis. Image Exhibit Credit: Sergei Kazarian et al.

ID Gel Tape Approach Grabs More Than Just Fingerprint
A Breakthrough In CSI

Ones hands can tell a lot about people and their habits. Human hands can and do get into everything … they sense touch, temperature, texture, aid in the sense of smell, and can get into and be directed to places and situations where virtually no other body part can go.

Lately, crime scene investigators have been given a new tool on which one can investigate and exploit the dynamic nature of the hand.

For years, the fingerprint from the Hand was the main information that was important to an investigation … who was here? Modern investigators, however, want to know more … a lot more!

With this new tool, ID Gel Tape, investigators now are able to gather not just the ridges and patterns that are the fingerprint … they are able to grab and analyze the material that is held within the ridges and patterns and develop a greater information profile on the person the fingerprint belonged to.

This from LiveScience (HT: Yahoo! News) –

New Fingerprint Technique Could Reveal Diet, Sex, Race
Charles Q. Choi - Special to LiveScience, LiveScience.com - Fri Jul 20, 3:55 PM ET

A victim might not care if a murderer is a smoker or a vegetarian. But having such knowledge could help police solve a case. Details like this could one day be at their fingertips if a new fingerprinting technique pans out as expected.

Standard methods for collecting fingerprints at crime scenes, which involve powders, liquids or vapors, can alter the prints and erase valuable forensic clues, including traces of chemicals that might be in the prints.

Now researchers find tape made from gelatin could enable forensics teams to chemically analyze prints gathered at crime scenes, yielding more specific information about miscreants' diets and even possibly their gender and race.

Nimble technique

The gel tape can gather prints from a variety of surfaces, including door handles, mug handles, curved glass and computer screens, just as conventional fingerprint techniques can. The gelatin is then irradiated with infrared rays inside a highly sensitive instrument that rapidly takes a kind of "chemical photograph," identifying molecules within the print in 30 seconds or less, said physical chemist Sergei Kazarian at Imperial College London.

Fingerprints contain just a few millionths of a gram of fluid, or roughly the same amount of material in a grain of sand. That might, however, be enough to determine valuable clues about a person beyond the print itself, such as their gender, race, diet and lifestyle, Kazarian and his colleagues find.

For instance, preliminary results could identify males based on the greater amounts of urea in their fingerprints—urea being the key ingredient of urine. The complex brew of organic chemicals within prints might also shed light on the age and race of people, and hold traces of items people came into contact with, such as gunpowder, smoke, drugs, explosives, or biological or chemical weapons.

Even a person's diet might be determined from fingerprints, as vegetarians may have different amino acid content than others, Kazarian said.

"More volunteers need to be tested for statistical information on fingerprints with regard to race, sex and so on, but we believe this will be a powerful tool," he told LiveScience.

Much faster

In addition, unlike conventional fingerprint techniques, the new method did not distort or destroy the original prints, instead keeping them intact and available for further analysis, the researchers said. Their findings are detailed in the Aug. 1 issue of the journal Analytical Chemistry.

Other techniques can analyze chemicals in fingerprints, including methods that use X-rays. Still, Georgia Tech analytical chemist Facundo Fernandez noted this new technique "is very rapid. You cannot say the same for other approaches." Fernandez was not involved in the current study.

Kazarian said his group's technique is especially good at identifying organic deposits, the main components of fingerprints.
Reference And Additional Story Links Here>>

Digital Imaging Camera Conversion: Records To MP3

Peter Alyea, a digital conservation specialist at the Library of Congress, scans a record from the 1930s. Image Credit: Nell Boyce/NPR

Digital Imaging Camera Conversion: Records To MP3

Digital imaging technology is an amazing tool. It provides biometric information to help keep us safe, it reads symbologies so that we can get information delivered to us through a camera and sofware (up to 20 seconds of low-res video on our cellphone screens - a 4 meg file), and now this type of technology can take a picture of a round phonograph record and deliver a sound reproduction via a MP3 file converted from reading the grooves of the record.

What more versitility does one want from a technology?

Excerpts from National Public Radio -

You Can Play the Record, but Don't Touch
by Nell Boyce - Morning Edition, July 16, 2007

At the Library of Congress, in a small, white room with bright red carpet, physicist Carl Haber sits down to play a record from 1930. It's a recording of Gilbert and Sullivan's "Iolanthe." But here's the strange thing: This record is broken.

"It looks like somebody just got hungry and took a bite out of it," says Haber. He has positioned the record on a turntable and fitted the broken piece back into place, like it's a jigsaw puzzle. "If we spun this thing fast, the piece would come flying off, you know, and maybe hit somebody," he says.

But this turntable doesn't spin like a normal record player. And there's no needle hovering over the record. Instead, there's a camera linked to a computer. It snaps detailed images of the groove cut into the disc, and uses the images to reconstruct the sound without ever touching the record.

Haber got the idea for this setup a few years ago, when he was driving to work and listening to NPR. He heard a report on how historic audio recordings can be so fragile that they risk being damaged if someone plays them by dragging a needle over their surfaces. It made Haber wonder if he could get the sound off old recordings without touching their delicate surfaces. He worked with a colleague, Vitaliy Fadeyev, and they managed to reconstruct sound on a 1950 recording of "Goodnight, Irene" performed by the Weavers.

This was just a proof of principle. They have now developed their hands-off technique to the point that it's being tested at the Library of Congress to see whether it's good enough to someday scan the library's vast archive of sound recordings.

One thing they've learned: A broken record is no problem. Haber clicks a mouse and the camera takes pictures of the groove on "Iolanthe."

"And by taking these pictures, it essentially just unwinds the record into a big long stripe," Haber explains.

A scanned photo image of the grooves in the record from "Hemlock Blues" by David Lee Johnson from the early 1950s. IRENE skips right over the scratched parts (as seen above) of normally unplayable records. Image Credit: physicist Carl Haber

The picture appears on Haber's computer screen. It looks like a black and white photo of a tire tread.

"Here's the break," he says, pointing to a line. "You can see, there's a little piece of dust, little scratch marks on it." The computer ignores all these flaws as it translates the images into sound.
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IRENE was installed at the Library of Congress late last year. The library has millions of old audio recordings, and many are in poor condition or use obsolete formats. Peter Alyea, a digital conservation specialist at the library, says that to play old records, you often need trained technicians who can do things like choose the proper needle out of dozens of options. But if IRENE lives up to its potential, Alyea says, anyone could make a digital copy of an old record.
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Alyea says it's like a photocopy machine for sound. "It brings the possibility of automation much closer to reality for these kinds of materials."

And given that he has thousands and thousands of records that he would like to digitize and make widely available, the prospect of automation is hugely attractive.
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Exactly how good is IRENE at making digital copies?
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One test involves a disc etched with simple tones to see how well IRENE can read some old-fashioned discs coated with lacquer. The library has thousands of these one-of-a-kind records. The format is obsolete.

But luckily, Haber says, audio engineer George Horn still makes them at Fantasy Studios in California. Horn cut some discs with well-defined tones. Haber says, IRENE can reproduce the tones amazingly well.

"The machine is not adding its own color. It's not adding anything of its own nature," he says.

Haber says IRENE does take some things away. He plays one record from 1953, a Les Paul and Mary Ford recording of the song "Johnny Is the Boy for Me." This record has a bad skip in it that's very apparent on a regular record player. But IRENE skips over the skip like it's not there.
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IRENE, an audio-recording system, can scan old and damaged records and wax cylinders ... and make digital recordings from them. Image Credit: physicist Carl Haber

IRENE isn't perfect. It removes pops and clicks, but it sometimes has a hissing noise in the background. Still, the Library of Congress finds all this encouraging enough that it has started testing the system on hundreds of discs, what Alyea describes as a kind of simulation of what a mass digitization project would be like.

When taking flat photographs, it can create a three-dimensional image of the groove on a record, or on an old wax cylinder. Haber been working with the University of California's Phoebe Hearst Museum of Anthropology, to reconstruct sound from field recordings, like one wax cylinder made around 1911 that features a Native American called Ishi.

Haber says it's amazing to hear these voices from the past. "There's this whole human and cultural component to what we're looking at," says Haber, whose main job is studying subatomic particles at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California. "That makes it wonderful."
Read All (audio examples of IRENE conversion compared at story source)>>

Try doing this with laser technology!

Hot Technology Made Simple ... And On EBAY

Everybody knows that the iPhone can make phone calls, play movies & music, surf the web, and a lot more.

But, Will It Blend?

That is the question.

EBAY Link For Blended iPhone>>

Pay-At-Table Systems Are Just Desserts

Wayne Smith, a patron at Ray's Killer Creek restaurant in Alpharetta, Ga., swipes his credit card through a device that allows customers to pay for their meal at the table. Image Credit: Jason Bronis / AP

Pay-At-Table Systems Are Just Desserts

Little by little, credit card skimming by restaurant table waiting staff is a problem creeping into some of the finer restaurants.

This practice of “skimming”, where the waiter has the equipment to be able to swipe and capture the credit card charging information from the magnetic stripe, is becoming one of the easiest identity theft scams to pull off because the equipment is relatively inexpensive and easy to conceal.

This practice and payment “Dance” at the end of a good meal out doesn’t have to exist.

Fine dining, sit-down restaurants can nip this problem in the bud and have the turnaround time of the customer at the table be reduced (thus making available a higher number of meals served at peak serving times) by having the server process the check at the table along with the delivery of the dessert.

Excerpts from AP via MSNBC -

Restaurants test table card readers
Rise in 'skimming' scams pressuring restaurateurs to adopt technology
By Greg Bluestein - Associated Press - Updated: 11:29 a.m. PT July 6, 2007

ALPHARETTA, Ga. - It's become routine for customers to swipe their credit or debit cards at consoles in fast-food joints, gas stations and grocery stores. So why do we still hand over the plastic at sit-down restaurants?

Pay-at-the-table systems are popular in Europe and other parts of the world, but they haven't yet caught on in the U.S., largely because equipment makers haven't been able to point to a reason why restaurateurs should invest in the gear.
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"Restaurants are the last holdout where you still give up your credit card. That's why we think this is the next logical step," said Paul Rasori, VeriFone Inc.'s vice president of marketing.

Verifone's system, called the VX-670, is about the size of thick remote control and sports a square LCD screen and a numerical keypad. It accepts debit and credit cards and can automatically add the tip.

Once the customer swipes a card, the information is sent wirelessly to a computer in the restaurant. A tiny printer spits out a receipt.

Apriva Class A Certifies Hypercom's Optimum M4100 Blade, June 20, 2007 -- Hypercom's rugged Optimum M4100 Blade is the first truly mobile credit/debit terminal designed to comply with current global security standards and the smallest product of its kind. It weighs 7.1 ounces; is 4.9 inches long, 2.7 inches wide, and 1.15 inches deep; features GPRS and Wi-Fi communications; top-of-the-line high-contrast full-color signature capture touch screen; and other state-of-the-art features for restaurants, delivery services and other businesses worldwide. Image & Caption Credit: Business Wire

The Blade, a competitor from rival Hypercom Corp., is a sleek, hand-held unit. But it also sports a touch screen that can double as a menu and an optional contactless reader that lets customers wave their cards instead of swiping them.
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Some studies suggest as much as 70 percent of all cases of credit-card skimming stem from restaurant scams. A 2005 report by Fair Isaac, the fraud-detection specialist, detailed how handheld skimming devices could take seconds to transmit data wirelessly to a fraudster and advised merchants to use table-side devices so cards are always in a customer's hand.

The pay-at-the-table manufacturers say there's another benefit: greater productivity.

"If we can tell them they can increase table turns on peak hours by 1 to 4 percent, what's that worth to businesses?" said Scott Goldthwaite, vice president of Hypercom's global business development.
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Neither Verifone nor Hypercom — would reveal the price of the units, but both have launched tests in U.S. markets to gauge how the American diner reacts. Both companies specialize in secure electronic payment devices. Hypercom sells devices in Europe, China and Latin America. Verifone sells in Europe, Israel and Southeast Asia.

At Ray's Killer Creek, an upscale steakhouse in the north Atlanta suburb of Alpharetta, the VeriFone system didn't take long to catch on.

Jim Wahlstrom, the restaurant's operating partner, spent roughly 10 minutes on briefing his waiters about the technology.

"We're all used to grocery stores and ATM machines," Wahlstrom said. "We all operate with our credit cards and debit cards in our daily lives."

As the happy-hour crowd filed into the restaurant on a recent weekday afternoon, many seemed unfazed by the new way to pay.
Read All>>

This video report from CNET -

Report for Pay-At-Table Systems begins at 1:15 time left and goes to 0:46.

Access Says PALM OS Still Breathing

Access Says PALM OS Still Breathing

The death of the PALM OS has been put off ... at least temporarily.

Recent reports as to the introduction of the new Linux OS that was to be introduced by Access have confirmed a delay of the Linux replacement OS due to the difficulties encountered in an overall conversion of the PALM approach.

This from Telcoms.com -

Palm OS: Reports of my death "exaggerated"
Telcoms.com - 03 July 2007

You thought Palm's operating system was a stiff. Devoid of life, it is in death. It has joined the choir invisible. It is, indeed, an ex-gadget. After all, development work stopped when PalmOS v6 was cancelled in June, 2005, and since then the biggest-selling Treo has been the Windows Mobile-based 750. If you want a 3G Palm, you've got to pick a Windows Treo; PalmOS v5.4, the last version from February, 2004, doesn't support fast data connections.

Then, Palm went on to sell the OS intellectual property rights, not to mention the software division PalmSource, to Japanese Linuxco Access, and started work on its own mobile Linux distro. So, surely that was it? Well, it turns out that the Linux project is harder than they thought. In April, CEO Ed Colligan promised it would be ready by the end of the year.

But now, during an analyst call, he confessed that the new OS won't be ready until next year. Further, there would be new products based on the Palm OS, as well as Windows Mobile, in the meantime. It remains to be seen whether Palm is going to keep hammering at its own Linux; after all, Access's ALP is already a PalmOS-like interface on top of an embedded Linux. Or they could try one of the existing MobiLinuxen, such as the Motorola-championed LiMO, or LiPS.
Reference Here (subscription required)>>

WiFi With A 238 Mile Record Reach

Researcher Ermanno Pietrosemoli has set what appears to be a new record for the longest communication link with Wi-Fi. Image Credit: Escuela Latinoamerica de Redes

WiFi With A 238 Mile Record Reach

So you are sitting in your home in Los Angeles and you notice that among the available WiFi networks in your area, you have your own at&t DSL connection, a neighbors cable based wireless signal, and one from Hearst Castle on the central coast of California.

Well, that is about the same distance as someone in Venezuela was able to achieve on a WiFi network portal … that is, to set up a WiFi connection with the reach of about 238 miles using mostly “off-the-shelf” equipment and a few hacked parts.

Imagine the additional coverage one could achieve on a DSL in areas where the phone company has neither hardwire service or cell towers (at least until a direct satellite link is affordable). Judging from what networking guru Ermanno Pietrosemoli was able to prove when he established a wireless connection between a PC in El Aguila, Venezuela, and one in Platillon Mountain, this may be both a financially and technologically feasible solution for some remote communications applications.

Excerpts from CNET News Blog –

New Wi-Fi distance record: 382 kilometers
Posted by Michael Kanellos - CNET News Blog - June 18, 2007 9:18 AM PDT

Researcher Ermanno Pietrosemoli has set what appears to be a new record for the longest communication link with Wi-Fi.

Pietrosemoli, president of the Escuela Latinoamerica de Redes (which means networking school of Latin America) established a Wi-Fi link between two computers located in El Aguila and Platillon Mountain, Venezuela. That's a distance of 382 kilometers, or 238 miles. He used technology from Intel, which is concocting its own long-range Wi-Fi equipment, and some off-the-shelf parts. Pietrosemoli gets about 3 megabits per second in each direction on his long-range connections.

Most Wi-Fi signals only go only a few meters before petering out. Conventional Wi-Fi transmitters, however, send signals in all directions. By directing the signal to a specific point, range can be increased.

Image Credit: Escuela Latinoamerica de Redes

Honing the signal, however, means that the receiver and transmitter have to be aligned. Trees, buildings and other objects that get between them can sever the link. The curvature of Earth, misalignment between the transmitter and receiver, as well as shaking and any sort of movement at the transmitting or receiving end can also impair the signal. (To ameliorate some of these factors, Intel has created a way to electrically steer the signal, which in turn increases bandwidth.)

Geography was on Pietrosemoli's side. El Aguila and Platillon Mountain sit in the Andes, which form fairly jagged peaks in this part of the range.

The old record was 310 kilometers. Swedish scientists made a link between a balloon and an Earth-bound station.
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Platillon Mountain, Venezuela directional INTEL antenna aimed at a location 238 miles away. Image Credit: Escuela Latinoamerica de Redes

Intel, along with organizations like Inveneo, are testing the feasibility of long-range Wi-Fi as a communication link in Uganda and other emerging nations. Long-range Wi-Fi isn't as robust at WiMax, but the towers cost a lot less. Some hobbyists have accomplished a long-range Wi-Fi connection with low bandwidth.

Similar experiments are being carried out in the United States as well. A long-range Wi-Fi link connects Intel Research's Berkeley Lab and a Sun Microsystems lab on the San Francisco Peninsula, more than 20 miles away.
Reference Here>>

Corporate Culture (and technology) Gone Wrong

Albertson's - Coming of age in an internet world. Image Credit: W=UH

Corporate Culture (and technology) Gone Wrong

Let’s be honest … when a company invests improperly in technology that would have allowed them to compete on an equal footing with the other players in the marketplace the worst things can happen.

Albertson’s never had a clue that after it purchased Lucky Stores that it now had to finally jump into the “discount club” fray along with Ralph’s and Vons. The management put off the decision for the longest time but finally had to submit to the competitive pressure.

The problem was that they bought off on technology that was "on the cheap"! The loyalty/discount cards they had purchased placed the unique barcode information for each customer on the surface of the plastic that the card or key-fob was made of … as opposed to having the image embedded or otherwise protected by the plastic cover.

The barcode information began to rub off immediately upon issue and after awhile became unreadable by the barcode reader. This left the job to the cashier who had to manually enter the data in order to allow the customer to accrue loyalty points and achieve a discount.

It gets worse – Albertson’s will now totally abandon the “discount/loyalty” program with the excuse (spin) that they are opening up the discounts to everyone … sound familiar? It should. That is what they told all of the shoppers as the excuse as to why they did not have a loyalty program … just after they had purchased Lucky Stores.

Really, this is about corporate culture and how it can go all wrong.

"IF KEYS ARE FOUND, PLEASE RETURN TO NEAREST ALBERTSON'S STORE" - Image Credit: This Is Broken

News Item from The Salt Lake Tribune -

No more 'Preferred Card' at Albertsons
The Salt Lake Tribune - Article Last Updated: 06/20/2007 01:39:55 PM MDT

Posted: 1:27 PM - Albertsons stores are ending their "Preferred Card" program at 78 Southwest stores.

The Arizona Republic reports today that instead, the chain will offer discounted items to everyone.

"Our objective is to give all the consumers in the marketplace the same great deals irregardless of having to have a loyalty card," said Bob Colgrove, Albertsons Southwest division president.

Other supermarkets and grocers, including Safeway, Fry's and Bashas', said this week that they don't plan to follow Albertsons' lead and will keep their cards.
Reference Here>>

That's because their (Safeway, Fry's, and Bashas') cards work.

By the way, never listen to anyone who uses “IRREGARDLESS” … it (irregardless) is NOT a word. Just as a barcode is not a barcode when it can be, or becomes mushed.

The Who, When, Where Clearly Defined Space

Corrections officer is able to keep track of anyone who is wearing a coded RFID wristband or belt mounted sensor anywhere in a defined prison space. Image Credit: Alanco/TSI Prism Inc.

The Who, When, Where Clearly Defined Space (with video demo link)

The Minnesota Department of Corrections has decided to implement a system that is gaining great favor with prison systems throughout the country.

This deployment is a system adopted by the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department last year to keep track of both inmates and Sheriff Officers that operate the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Correctional Services Division facilities.

The tamper proof system of bracelets and sensors will track the movements of all of the inmates and prison guard personal throughout any facility the RFID antennae array is installed and implemented.

Not to worry America, now even Paris Hilton’s whereabouts will not be a secret … even to the paparazzi! Well, at least until she is released from Sheriff Baca's tightly survailed RFID domain.

Excerpted from Computerworld -

Minnesota turns to RFID to monitor inmates
The system can detect track prisoners, modify behavior
Marc L. Songini, Computerworld - June 18, 2007

The Minnesota Department of Corrections (DOC) is about to roll out a half-million-dollar radio frequency identification (RFID) inmate-tracking system at one of its facilities to boost security and automate the monitoring of prisoners.
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The RFID system is from Alanco Technologies Inc. in Scottsdale, Ariz.

A spokeswoman for the DOC offered few details about the project, except to note the state has other prisons with RFID-based inmate-tracking systems. She deferred questions to Alanco.

Alanco's system is "a very powerful management tool that... can change the way prisons are managed," said Greg Oester, president of Alanco/TSI Prism Inc. the Alanco subsidiary providing the RFID technology. "It provides a level of monitoring not available by any other way. The inmates know they are monitored and are lectured that the system is there, and they learn very quickly that it is extremely accurate. Basically, they stop doing the things they face additional punishments for."

Its use can also free up correctional staff to engage in other tasks, such as drug sweeps, instead of just monitoring inmates [Video Demo Link].

The tracking system is based on active RFID tag technology and provides alerts if something abnormal is going on, such as a fight among the inmates, said Oester. In such a system, he explained, both inmates and corrections guards wear wrist straps containing a proprietary RFID tag, which sends out a signal every two seconds to antennas installed inside of the facility and around its perimeter. The readers feed information into the proprietary TSI Prism management application that sends the data to a master terminal in a control room as well as to client terminals placed in strategic locations throughout the facility, such as the warden's office.

It's up to the prison administrators to decide what the exceptions are. They could include any time a prisoner gets within 10 feet of a fence or when two rival prison gang leaders get too close. If there is an exception, such as a fight or if an RFID strap is torn off, the rules-based software detects it immediately. The monitoring screen goes from green to red and sends out an audio alert. Once an alert is issued, the screen shows where the trouble is and identifies nearby guards and prisoners.

If it's a gang fight or a hostage situation, the staff will know the identities of everyone involved and what the threat level is based on the histories of the offending inmates, which are kept in a database. "It's proven to be a tremendous aid in reducing prison violence," said Oester. Every infraction committed by a prisoner is in the database, and any perpetrator of a crime can be immediately located and dealt with.

A prisoner can be tracked in virtual real time, as well. "If there is an inmate suspected of being a mule [carrier] for contraband, we can watch him all day and find out where he goes and roll up his whole network," said Oester. It can also be used to document prison processes, such as whether a diabetic inmate has received his medication or not.
Reference Here>>

The Biomass Downside Of Biometrics

Silhouettes representing healthy, overweight, and obese. Image Credit: Wikipedia via FDA

The Biomass Downside Of Biometrics

Many security systems use a confirmation “second entry” in order to verify the clearance of an individual through a specific pass gate in a secure environment.

In a biometric secure system, however, a “growing” problem is coming of age here in North America.

It seems that the incidents of false positive readings on biometrics devices where a “biometrics only” confirmation verification are on the rise and the reason is a little surprising.

These false acceptances are being triggered through weight creep against many DOD biometric databases.

This item excerpted from TechInsider Blog (Allan Holmes, Bob Brewin and Daniel Pulliam on what's happening and what's being discussed in the world of federal information technology.) -

The Risk of Using Biometrics: People Get Fat
By Allan Holmes Wednesday, June 06, 2007 11:34 AM

The following item was posted by Bob Brewin.

DISA has develop a new guide detailing how individuals gain access to Defense Department computers and networks, which contains pages of cautionary warnings about the use of biometric identifiers.
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But the guide, which goes by the bureaucratic title “Access Control in Support of Information Systems Security Technical Implementation Guide (STIG),” also warns that current and planned biometric identification systems carry more than their share of risks.

“A compromised password can simply be changed, however once a biometric is compromised there is no going back or changing it,” according to the STIG. “For information systems that currently accept Biometrics-only for authentication, this must be combined with another authentication method such as a password.”

“The central risk of the verification process is that the technology will mistakenly verify a user’s identity when that person is actually someone else – a phenomena known as false acceptance,” according to the guide.
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Poorly designed biometric-recognition systems can be tricked into verifying someone else’s identity, the STIG reports. For example, with a poorly designed facial recognition system, an imposter may simply show the capture device a life-sized photograph of a valid user or, in the case of voice recognition, a tape recording of the valid user’s voice.

The DISA guide added: “For any biometric, one can devise a potential substitute to mimic the real user, though certainly some biometric characteristics are more susceptible to this than others. To mitigate this risk, robust biometric solutions have ‘liveness’ checks that validate the sample as coming from a live human being and not a facsimile.”
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I obtained the above information from a draft copy of the STIG, which is OK to write about because someone at DISA stamped the document “For Office Use Only,” instead of “For Official Use Only.”
Reference Here>>

RF-WiFi-ID – Tracking With Combined Technologies

People can wear the Siemens/Ekahau tags – Image Credit: BBC News

RF-WiFi-ID – Tracking With Combined Technologies

At a recent exposition held at London’s Olympia Exposition Centre, The Wireless Event – delivering enterprise mobility, Motorola, and Siemens unveiled systems that were jointly developed with the Finnish firm Ekahau, which can track objects or people.

By using technologies that were already deployed in most business and public controlled environments, one can track objects and people throughout a managed WiFi radio space.

RFID tags, and some software stitch this application together so that through the triangulation of sensed ping information, the specific location of a person or thing is easily determined.

Excerpts from BBC News -

Wi-fi and RFID used for tracking
Wireless tracking systems could be used to protect patients in hospitals and students on campuses, backers of the technology said.
BBC News - Published: 2007/05/25 11:56:43 GMT

The combination of Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) tags and wi-fi allows real-time tracking of objects or people inside a wireless network.

Angelo Lamme, from Motorola, said tracking students on a campus could help during a fire or an emergency.

"You would know where your people are at any given moment," he said.

Marcus Birkl, head of wireless at Siemens, said location tracking of assets or people was one of the biggest incentives for companies, hospitals and education institutions to roll out wi-fi networks.
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Battery powered

Battery-powered RFID tags are placed on an asset and they communicate with at least three wireless access points inside the network to triangulate a location.

Mr Birkl said: "The tags have a piece of software on them and they detect the signal strength of different access points.

"This information is sent back to the server and it then models the movement of the tag depending on the shift in signal strength detected."

For the system to work, the building or area that has been deployed with a wireless network needs to have been mapped and calibrated.

To effectively locate objects a wireless access point is needed every 30 metres and Siemens said it was able to pinpoint assets to within a metre of their actual position.

Mr Birkl said: "It's very useful for the health care industry - where there are highly expensive pieces of mobile equipment that move around a hospital.

RFID tags could track patients and equipment – Image Credit: BBC News

"At every point in the day health staff need to know where it is."

The system can also be used to track wi-fi equipped devices, such as laptops, tablet PCs and wi-fi enabled phones.
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'More popular'

As wi-fi becomes more popular in schools, the technology could also be used to track students.

"It has to be aligned with the understanding of the people who are tracked," said Mr Birkl.

There have been privacy concerns expressed in some quarters about RFID tags, especially around the possible use of tags on shopping goods to monitor consumer spending habits.
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"There needs to be standards put in place so the data is not abused for other purposes," said Mr Birkl.

He added: "But there are clear benefits to keeping people safe."

More than half of respondents to a recent pan-Europe consultation on RFID said regulations were needed to police the use of tags.
Read All>>

The Trouble With Palm OS

Treo 755p Palm OS Smartphone - Image Credit: Brighthand (A.Wright)

The Trouble With Palm OS

The trouble isn’t that the operating system doesn’t work, or is reliable, or even that it isn’t even owned by the company that had originally developed it. The trouble with the Palm OS is that everyone knows that it is time to move on to an operating system that will take advantage of all that this new mobility world has to promise.

Phone, Camera/Imager, WiFi, Bluetooth, Digital Video, Physical World Connection & Hyperlink Applications, and More are functions better left to the next generation of operating system that ACCESS is busy developing with Linux. Microsoft has led the agenda in the mobility arena and it is now time for the Palm OS to become the Windows 95 of its world.

Excerpts from Computerworld Mobile & Wireless -

Treo 755p: The Palm OS goes out with a whimper, not a bang
The end of the Palm OS?
By James Turner – Freelance Writer For Computerworld - May 17, 2007

The Palm Pilot was the first wildly successful product that enabled us to walk around with a small computer in our pockets. Palm -- and the Palm OS -- has long since branched out into smart phones, and many reports claim the new Treo 755p, just released by Sprint Nextel Corp., will be the last hurrah for the aging Palm OS as Palm replaces it with Linux.

There are many advantages to Palm in making this move. Perhaps the biggest is the fact that Palm can leverage that technology for the Treo and make available to users the many third-party applications written for Linux-based phones.

So the Treo 755p may well be the end of an era for a platform that once held near-monopolistic market share for mobile devices. Is the 755p a grand final moment for Palm OS?

Side-By-Side Older Treo 680, Treo 755p, and Nokia N95 - Image Credit: Brighthand (A.Wright)

Not really. We just spent some time with the 755p and found some solid incremental improvements, but the device is mostly familiar, with nothing that will make you sit back and say "wow." The most noticeable change is the same "antenna-ectomy" that other recent Treo releases received. The resulting form factor fits a bit better in a pocket, but the Treo antenna was never that big to begin with. Palm touts the 755p as being slimmer, but if you measure the device, it's only 1.2mm thinner.

From a corporate perspective, the Treo 755p supports the new Microsoft Exchange "Direct Push" technology. Assuming that your IT department sets up your Exchange server to support it, this allows you to receive e-mail as soon as it arrives rather than having to wait until the device polls for it.
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Beyond that, though, the Treo 755p is very similar to the older Treos. For example, like the Treo 750, the 755p is now covered by one of those annoying, flimsy plastic snap-on covers that could easily come off the first time it catches on something. The memory capacity is the same as the 700p -- 128MB with 60MB available to the user -- as is the 312-MHz XScale processor. Both devices run the same release of Palm OS and have the same display and camera.

Oddly, the Treo 755p is rather pricey for a device sporting an aging operating system. Sprint is offering it for as low as $280, depending on the service plan, which is significantly more expensive than more up-to-date smart phones. Sprint offers both the Motorola Q and at least one BlackBerry for less than $100, depending on your plan, and a host of other smart phones for under $200.

So, if this is, indeed, the last significant product based on the Palm OS, it goes out with a whimper, not a bang. Palm hasn't released much that has been new or interesting since the Treo 700w, its first Windows Mobile phone, which started shipping more than a year ago. Of course, that will change dramatically when it releases its first Linux devices, which could see the light of day before the end of the year, according to some reports.
Read All>>

Sounds like the Linux OS can not arrive soon enough.

Rumor has it that Motorola may scoop up Palm and kill two birds with one stone … own and eliminate a major cellphone competitor and have access to ACCESS support of the Palm OS through Palm’s perpetual license agreement in order to prop up the Symbol Technologies products that were sold with the Palm OS. If the rumor becomes true, this would be a significant play.

If this were to happen, Motorola would become very strong in its core business and it would hurt the fortunes of any company that had been put together in order to capitalize on the vacuum created through the recent non-renewal of the Palm OS license to Symbol Technologies before Motorola had purchased the company.

Mobility Devices - The Tail That Wags The Dog Of Digital Signage

Traditional Digital Signage - Image Credit: Digital Signage Expo (formerly Digital Retailing Expo) - ExpoNation LLC

Mobility Devices - The Tail That Wags The Dog Of Digital Signage

People who make their living in the arena of visual communications are just now beginning to grapple with the power of the very small screen platform. This realization was not made any clearer than what transpired in a recent discussion panel held at this week’s Digital Retailing Expo - May 16 & 17, 2007 at the Navy Pier Exhibition Center in Chicago, IL.

Notably missing were discussions about the appropriate use of “BlueCasting” (Blue-Jacking … Bluetooth Delivered Messaging) and Physical World Connection concepts through which one might deliver a digital message to the mobility device screen.

Truth is that the tail-that-wags-the-dog of large digital displays will soon be the delivery of digital content to cell radio, WiFi radio, and Bluetooth enabled devices with little screens … not handheld devices with little screens used to influence big screen displays as the discussion suggests.

Digital retailing on a handheld is just now on the radar of ALL of the industry experts.

Excerpts from Marketing At Retail (POPAI) -

Mobile Phone as Key to Digital Retail
Editorial: David Keene - Marketing At Retail - 5/18/2007, 5:12:01 PM

The Digital Retailing Expo changed its name this year to the Digital Signage Expo, to take advantage of the growing concern for anything digital signage in retail, transportation, education, and corporate environments. But in Chicago this week, the city that arguably gave rise to the modern retail industry, the Digital Signage Expo kicked off under its new moniker with perhaps more buzz about things retail than any other vertical market.
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On Wednesday [May 16, 2007], one of the most compelling panels was "Going Mobile". Moderator/Presenter Stephen Randall, CEO of LocaModa, led a discussion with Matt Lindley, SVP and executive creative director at Arnold One (an ad agency); Brian Ardinger, SVP and marketing officer at Nanonation; and Mike Brown of Artisan Live to explore how mobile phone technologies are enabling "the next wave" in digital signage interactivity and place-based communications at retail particularly.

Randall (whose white paper on the topic was recently featured in the pages of Marketing At Retail) started the panel with a firm admonition that mobile as a robust, at-retail advertising vehicle on par with the other three screens, is not here yet. He cited the double-opt in limitations to mobile–under the "Can-spam" act: any mobile phone user must opt-in, and re-confirm the opt-in, before they can be targeted with mobile coupons, SMS messages etc. And Randall emphasized that with mobile, "seven guys control it." In other words, the major mobile carriers (Cingular, Sprint, etc) have what Randall called "monopolistic DNA" that is limiting the market from developing freely.

But Randall, after throwing out a variety of caveats, did acknowledge "the mobile phone is a link to digital signage". He cited several case studies where the mobile phone was used as a "remote control" for interactive signage systems in retail. And he observed that the key to the success of mobile as a catalyst for digital signage would be a tie to the web–interactive signage systems, linked to mobile phone users, that extend the interactive features of the web to at-retail.

Agency veteran Matt Lindley, SVP and executive creative director at Arnold One, shared his many experiences where his clients are requesting a mobile component to ad campaigns. Lindley also drew parallels to the web, saying that mobile campaigns can mimic web campaigns, but acknowledged that the money is not coming as rapidly into this channel as many agencies (with fond memories of the dotcom train) expected.

All the panelists agreed that the adoption of mobile phone as a key component to interactive digital signage was inevitable, that it was happening now, and that the initial successes are more "on-demand" than push as all the players including consumers tip-toe around privacy and legal issues surrounding the most personal of electronic devices on which marketers have now set their sites.
Reference Here>>

I Always Feel Like Someone Is Watching Me

Eyebox2 - The system uses an array of infrared LEDs and a 1.3 megapixel digital camera to monitor eye movements. The camera has higher resolution than most eye-tracking systems, and can easily pick out the distinctive infrared signature from a pair of human pupils from up to 10 metres. It can also track several people at once and can determine their gaze from four metres away to within 15 degrees. Image Credit: New Scientist

I Always Feel Like Someone Is Watching Me

When you are out in the crowd, looking around, you know, to see what is going on and to see what information is available, did you ever stop to think that the people who are displaying that information are looking right back at you?

They want to know what you are doing and if their information is sinking in!

They really are looking right into your eyes … well, tracking your eyes to try to understand your behavior. They are asking themselves, “Aren't our billboards pretty enough?” and “What is your problem, you didn’t even give us a gaze ... or a glance!”

This from the New Scientist -

Tracking billboards could give you the eyeball
Tom Simonite - NewScientist.com news service - 14:11 09 May 2007

A camera that monitors eye movements from up to 10 metres away makes it possible for smart billboards that track the attention of passers-by.

The developers behind the technology – dubbed Eyebox2 – believe it could have a range of possible applications, but should particularly interest advertisers. This is because it allows billboards to track people's attention and perhaps respond when it wanes.

Until now, eye-tracking systems have only worked over about half a metre.

"It's less accurate than those systems, but it is good enough to let us know whether you are looking at a display or billboard or not," says lead developer Roel Vertegaal from Queen's University in Ontario, Canada.
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Distance benefits

Most eye tracking devices monitor people while they use a computer. This can reveal, for example, which parts of a picture or a web page they are focusing on (see The mind ogles: Women are worse).

Being able to track gazes over greater distances opens up several new possibilities, according to Vertegaal. Space on advertising screens in public places could be sold "by the eyeball", he suggests. Or, the products in a store that get the most glances could be recorded.

"We are launching with the advertising market in mind, but there are many other applications," Vertegaal told New Scientist. The team has also tested it as a means of controlling a home entertainment system. "When you stop looking at the screen for a time, the image pauses until you are looking back again," Vertegaal says.

Focusing attention

And, another project involves making hearing aids function more effectively through eye tracking. "When you are looking at someone you automatically filter out other noise to hear what they are saying," Vertegaal says. "[Similarly] an eye tracker could tell a hearing aid what to focus on."

Vertegaal and colleagues have created a company, called Xuuk, to develop and market Eyebox2 commercially.

Linden Ball, a psychologist at Lancaster University in the UK, uses eye tracking to study human-computer interaction. He says such a system could perhaps provide a more natural way to control things on a large display. "If the accuracy is great enough, this technology might make eye tracking one way of doing that," he says.

Ball adds that advertisers already use eye-tracking technology to monitor the way people respond to adverts presented on a computer screen. "They could get similar data in a more natural environment," he says. "For example, which posters people attend to, how long they look for, whether they take in the whole thing, and the effect of logos or dynamic information like animations."
Reference Here>>

The Power To Be Tether Free

Powercast's no cord solutions are great for any low power device: 1) The Transmitter - plugs into the wall socket and broadcasts safe, low-power radio waves. 2) The Radio Waves - change their frequency as they bounce off objects and walls. 3) Tiny Receivers - in the devices that you have, "hear" frequencies around the original one, capturing up to 70% of the radio signal's energy. The energy is then converted into DC electricity. Image Credit: XPLANE.COM

The Power To Be Tether Free

An answer to a nagging and growing problem ... Here we are building this anytime, anywhere mobile life and every time we turn around ... we have to plug-in.

All of the tools we have that allow us to be a part of the mobility world require that we tether ourselves ... well, our tools, to a wall outlet and wait until we get our full charge of power.

Powercast wants to change (and charge) all of that, and their solution is really quite inventive. It has already received the CES "Best Of Show Award" for emerging technologies and great reviews from CNET.

Excerpts from Business 2.0 Magazine -

Death of the cell phone charger
A Pennsylvania entrepreneur has developed technology that gives you all the battery juice you need directly from the air. Business 2.0 reports.
By Melanie Haiken, Business 2.0 Magazine – April 2007

How much money could you make from a technology that replaces electrical wires? A startup called Powercast, along with the more than 100 companies that have inked agreements with it, is about to start finding out. Powercast and its first major partner, electronics giant Philips, are set to launch their first device powered by electricity broadcast through the air.

It may sound futuristic, but Powercast's platform uses nothing more complex than a radio--and is cheap enough for just about any company to incorporate into a product. A transmitter plugs into the wall, and a dime-size receiver (the real innovation, costing about $5 to make) can be embedded into any low-voltage device. The receiver turns radio waves into DC electricity, recharging the device's battery at a distance of up to 3 feet.

Picture your cell phone charging up the second you sit down at your desk, and you start to get a sense of the opportunity. How big can it get? "The sky's the limit," says John Shearer, Powercast's founder and CEO. He estimates shipping "many millions of units" by the end of 2008.
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Broadcasting power through the air isn't a new idea. Researchers have experimented with capturing the radiation in radio frequency at high power but had difficulty capturing it at consumer-friendly low power. "You'd have energy bouncing off the walls and arriving in a wide range of voltages," says Zoya Popovic, an electrical engineering professor at the University of Colorado who works on wireless electricity projects for the U.S. military.

That's where Shearer came in. A former physicist based in Pittsburgh, he and his team spent four years poring over wireless electricity research in a lab hidden behind his family's coffee house. He figured much of the energy bouncing off walls could be captured. All you had to do was build a receiver that could act like a radio tuned to many frequencies at once.

"I realized we wanted to grab that static and harness it," Shearer says. "It's all energy."
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Powercast says it has signed nondisclosure agreements to develop products with more than 100 companies, including major manufacturers of cell phones, MP3 players, automotive parts, temperature sensors, hearing aids, and medical implants.

The last of those alone could be a multibillion-dollar market: Pacemakers, defibrillators, and the like require surgery to replace dead batteries. But with a built-in Powercast receiver, those batteries could last a lifetime.

"Everyone's looking to cut that last cord," says Alex Slawsby, a consultant at Innosight who specializes in disruptive innovation. "Think of the billion cell phones sold last year. If you could get Powercast into a small percentage of the high-end models, those would be huge numbers."

Video Demonstration provided by CNET (click image) - Image Credit: CNET

Could Powercast's technology also work for larger devices? Perhaps, but not quite yet. Laptop computers, for example, use more than 10 times the wattage of Powercast transmissions.

But industry trends are on Shearer's side: Thanks to less energy-hungry LCD screens and processors, PC power consumption is slowly diminishing. Within five years, Shearer says, laptops will be down to single-digit wattage--making his revenue potential even more electrifying.
Reference Here>>

In Japan, research scientists at the University of Tokyo have come up with a unique material that can transmit electrical energy to nearby devices without the need for direct contact.

This material can be utilized as a table cloth or a wallpaper that would then re-charge devices through the Faraday induction process.

This from Just Chromatography Everything about Chromatography and Analytical Chemistry -

World without wires
01, May - Posted by Chemist as General Science

What would you say if in a few years from now you would not need a power cord to charge your notebook or to deal with those annoying, tangled up cords behind your TV and stereo? Or would you imagine that your PDA or cell phone could be recharged remotely?

I would say it is something rather from a more distant future, but research scientists at the University of Tokyo have come up with a unique material that can transmit electrical energy to nearby devices without the need for direct contact.

The system is based on a well know phenomenon discovered by Faraday in 1831 - electromagnetic induction - when electrical energy can be transmitted without a contact, just like some electric toothbrushes that recharge while sitting in a plastic charger.


The power-transmitting material is a plastic film with imprinted elements:

1.) Japanese Researcher’s knowhow - a contactless position-sensing system that allows to direct power to wherever the appliance sits . It has a two-dimensional grid of copper coils and a matrix of transistors made from the organic molecule pentacene.

2.) Switching mechanism consisting of an arrangement of plastic microelectromechanical system (MEMS) switches, which direct the power to the device.

3.) A second two-dimensional layer of copper coils that transmits the energy.

The sheet is 21×21 cm, 1 mm thick, and weighs 50 g. It contains a grid of 64 position-sensing units and 64 power-transmission units. The sheet is capable of providing 40.5 watts of power with more than 80% efficiency - sufficient to operate a small laptop computer.

Example of power transmission to LED in water – Image Reference: T Sekitani et al, Nat. Mater., DOI: 10.1038/nmat1903

When an electronic device containing a ‘receiving coil’ is next to the sheet, its presence is detected by the positioning coils, and coordinates relayed by the organic transistor circuit. The MEMS switches then direct the power to that point.

A head of research group Takao Sekitani comments:

“Since all the device components are manufactured on plastic films, the system is thin, lightweight and flexible. Therefore it is easy to put the sheet system in the wall, desk, floor - anywhere you can imagine. And because the system is manufactured by printing technologies it is potentially low-cost and it can transmit high power selectively to the position of electronic objects, making transmission loss very small.”
Reference Here>>

Smartphones That Know When & Where To Move

New DoCoMo phones, which are being released in Japan this month, will initially use the motion-sensing technology for games. Later in the year, the phones will be able to use gesture-sensing for map browsing. Image Credit: GestureTek

Smartphones That Know When & Where To Move

A new type of technology is making its way to the cellphone platform. The mobile phone has played host to GPS, Cameras, Symbology (barcode) Scanning, Walkie-Talkies, Bluetooth Broadcasting, MP3 Music, and more.

Well, there is a new application in town. It is a technology that comes from the world of video games and it is now being applied to the cellphone. The technology allows the phone to sense motion and gestures which are then interpreted to bring direction motion to the display images on the screen.

We already can imagine how this would be useful in games displayed on the phone, but this technology may be of greater benefit to the user when it allows one to scroll around screen images that are larger than the display screen itself.

With just a flick of the wrist, one can move around scroll menus, maps, photos, web pages designed for computer displays – all without touching the pad keys on the phone.

In the emerging Web 2.0 world of mobility, this technology is a pretty smart move!

Motion Sensing - Shake, Rock, & Roll - Image Credit: GestureTek

Excerpts from CNET News -

Technology brings motion-sensing to camera phones
Marguerite Reardon - CNET News.com

A company that supplies motion-sensing technology for videogames is bringing that technology to mobile phones.

Earlier this week, GestureTek announced that NTT DoCoMo in Japan would be embedding the EyeMobile gesture-recognition technology into two new FOMA 904i series handsets.

The new DoCoMo phones, which are being released in Japan this month, will initially use the motion-sensing technology for games. Later in the year, the phones will be able to use gesture-sensing for map browsing. Eventually, the technology will also be used for motion-controlled menu scrolling, picture browsing and mobile Internet surfing, company executives said.

Motion-sensing technology has recently come into vogue with the huge success of Nintendo's Wii games console, which enables people to hit tennis volleys like they're Andrew Murray. The Wii uses tiny embedded devices called accelerometers that detect motion. Some handset makers, such as Nokia, Samsung, LG and even newcomer Apple, are using accelerometer technology to provide some kind of motion-sensing capability in a handful of handset models.

The software supports three main types of motion: shake, rock and roll. Shake can be used for actions such as rolling dice and shuffling MP3 decks. Rock interprets right, left, up and down gestures to generate traditional cursor-style user input commands. Roll offers joystick control by responding to tilting motions used in navigating games, maps or Web pages.
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GestureTek is over 20 years old. The company got its start developing camera-based motion-sensing technology for museum installations. It then moved on to providing technology for digital signage, retail displays and devices such as the Microsoft Xbox 360 and the Sony PlayStation 2 EyeToy.

The deal with DoCoMo is the first time the company has licensed its technology to be embedded in mobile phones. The company has licensed its software to third-party BREW (Binary Runtime Environment for Wireless) developers to create games for Verizon Wireless subscribers. But in that case, the software is downloaded as part of the game and is not used for more advanced motion-sensing navigation applications.
Read All>>

This description of the new EyeMobile Engine software from GestureTek -

The EyeMobile Engine is a software-only solution that uses the existing camera on mobile phones to enable innovative mobile device interfaces and applications through real-time motion control.

An intuitive alternative to conventional mobile phone interfaces, EyeMobile allows you to do anything you would normally do with the device, such as...

Answer calls
Make a menu selection
Scrolling, pan, and zooming
Control games with hand motion

Instead of using small and cumbersome device buttons, EyeMobile enables you to use real-life motion for game control:

Driving
Flying
Throwing
Shooting
Fly-casting

EyeMobile Engine API for Developers -
A convenient environment for authoring EyeMobile-enabled applications for OTA and pre-embedded delivery to mobile devices, the EyeMobile Engine application programming interface (API) provides application developers with the means to integrate motion control with applications much the same way as with current analog controls such as keys and buttons.

The EyeMobile Engine SDK for OEMs -
Provides mobile device manufacturers with an ideal development environment for embedding EyeMobile Engine features.

Shake, Rock & Roll

Shake, Rock, and Roll are the EyeMobile Engine's three levels of tracking. Shake provides the amount of “shake” as a single value that the programmer can use as an input for such actions as shuffling MP3 play lists, throwing dice, etc. Rock is a gesture recognition system built on top of the Roll engine; Roll provides joystick-style input control.

Shake
The EyeMobile Shake extension provides developers with a “force of motion” control interface. Applications can then be controlled by how vigorously the user shakes the mobile device. Whenever a frenetic user-action is appropriate, the EyeMobile Shake extension may be implemented.

Rock & Roll
The EyeMobile RocknRoll extension provides the ability to control an application either by rocking the mobile device (i.e. flicking forward and back or side to side) or rolling it (i.e. tilting it from side to side or up and down). The RocknRoll extension presents the opportunity to control applications based upon rock, roll, or a combination of the two. With Rock, you can use the flick of a wrist to answer a call or simulate a throw. Use Roll to turn the pages of a document or for steering and navigation. Combine Rock and Roll to simulate mouse or joystick control.

Platforms

BREW
SYMBIAN
LINUX
Reference Here>>