The iPad on a table in the Apple case (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Craig, can you recommend a tablet for my wife as an alternative to an iPad? For comparisons sake. (No 4g required, simply wifi) Maybe from the surplus you came home with from CES, lol?

The iPad is certainly the 800 pound gorilla. It has the most software for it, and is the most compatible with accessories.

I’ve played with a few low-priced units and have found some better than others. Units like the Coby Kyros are inexpensive and work quite well. The short-fall for them is that they are usually built using the open-source versions of the Android operating system and aren’t officially blessed by Google. This means that you won’t be able to run some of the software on them that you’d want to, as Google restricts access to it from these types of devices. I got around much of that myself by signing up as a Google developer and registering the tablet under my developer account — but that’s kinda nerdy.

Unless you are willing to pay somewhere around $400 for a tablet from a cell phone carrier, you are going to run into some bumps in the road.  The various tablet manufacturers even make different models for direct sale verses being sold via the carriers.  You should probably check with retailers like Best Buy, Radio Shack, Ritz Camera, etc. to find something that will meet your needs.

We’re still in the “buyer beware” mode in the tablet arena, which brings us back to the iPad.  Certainly the best bet — although pretty expensive.

Related articles

• The Case For Buying iPads For Your Kids(gizmodo.com.au)

  ---

• News on Apple’s New iPad(phonesreview.co.uk)

  ---

• Can’t Get A “NEW” iPad? You Have Choices(futurelawyer.typepad.com)

  ---

This year’s game, called “Rebound Rumble”, will pit co-operative alliances of competitors against other alliances in a multi-faceted game of basketball and balance. I am proud to announce that the alliance of Team 131, CHAOS from Manchester Central High School from Manchester, NH, Team 58 from South Portland High School in South Portland, ME and Team 1831 from Gilford High School in Gilford, NH were the Champions of this event who earned a berth at World Championships in St. Louis in April.  Second Place went to the alliance of Team 1519, Mechanical Mayhem Milford Area Homeschoolers from Milford, NH, Team 885, the Green Team  from the Sharon Academy in Randolph, VT and Team 2791 from Shaker High School in Latham, NY. Congratulations to all these teams.

The top winner of the weekend was Team 1058 of Londonderry High School in Londonderry, NH who won the Regional Chairman’s Award and will go on to compete at World Championships for the National Chairmans Award.

After seeing how the fields of science and technology were beginning to dwindle here in the US, yet sports were encouraged and celebrated by almost everyone throughout society, Dean Kamen founded FIRST to help inspire our youth’s participation in what may be the most important fields within our country.  Since its inception 21 years ago, Graduates of this program are already influencing industry and even R&D in the United States.

Thank you to our sponsors the US Army and NH Precision Metals.

Additionally there were many other accolades awarded to these fantastic teams for their hard work, ingenuity and sportsmanship.  Congratulations to all.

Related articles

• Come On Down or Listen In As We Broadcast From The US FIRST Robotics Granite State Regional (CraigPeterson.com)

2008 Competition

You might think that robotics are geeky and boring — and you’d be wrong when it comes to the US First Robotics competition this weekend.  If you’ve ever been to the “Super Bowl” you might have some idea of just how exciting this weekend will be. There will be teams competing along with cheering crowds, there will be hundreds of players, coaches, and refs running onto the field and even a live play-by-play. But this isn’t your average sporting event.

This is the #1 event on the calendar for thousands of youth from high schools around the United States. This weekend, Manchester New Hampshire is hosting the area’s regional FIRST competition at the Verizon Wireless Arena. More than 45 teams comprised of hundreds of high school-aged students will be competing for a two-dozen prizes by entering their self-designed and built robots into a two-part competition.

This year’s game, called “Rebound Rumble”, will pit co-operative alliances of competitors against other alliances in a multi-faceted game of basketball and balance. More details can be found on the games website.

After seeing how the fields of science and technology were beginning to dwindle here in the US, yet sports were encouraged and celebrated by almost everyone throughout society, Dean Kamen founded FIRST to help inspire our youth’s participation in what may be the most important fields within our country.

This weekend I will be broadcasting live from the event, interviewing participants, organizers, coaches, sponsors and even doing live play-by-plays. Coverage of this event was made possible by the US Army and NH Precision Metals.  Please encourage your friends and families to listen on-the-air or on-line. The event will be covered as an over the air broadcast or on the Internet at http://wgiram.com and on WQSO 96.7 11 am to 2 pm.   The event is open to the public and is free of charge.

I hope to see you there!

Related articles

• Flight Simulator Shows Lockheed’s F-35 Jet Could Help NH Economy(boston.cbslocal.com)

  ---

• CES 2012: Dean Kamen Urges Innovators to Pass it Forward (spectrum.ieee.org)
• Show Biz Ain’t Nothing Compared To Science(geeksaresexy.net)

  ---

• Notable Inventor Visits Carl Hayden HS(myfoxphoenix.com)

  ---

Image via CrunchBase

Small Dog Electronics provides us with an Apple Expert every Sunday at 5:30pm to answer your questions about everything and anything Apple. If you have a question, visit WGIR/AM or 96.7 The Wave and fill out the form.  You can listen live to our segments at WGIR AM 610 or 96.7 FM the Wave

Small Dog Electronics is New England’s largest Apple Specialist with over 16 tears of experience selling and servicing the complete Apple line. They share their passion for technology by providing the most personable, dependable and complete Apple shopping, training and support experience.

Their headquarters is in Waitsfield, Vermont.  Their three retail stores are located in Manchester, New Hampshire at the Mall of New Hampshire, and South Burlington and Waitsfield, Vermont. Their website, www.smalldog.com, features close to 3,000 products for the Mac or PC enthusiast.

Socially responsible, they are incredibly motivated by the triple bottom line: people, planet and profit. The effect they have on their community, environment, customers and employees factors into the equation they call “success.”

They offer complete solutions for businesses, regardless of platform, including systems analysis, sales and implementation, as well as training, technical support, maintenance and repair. Small Dog Consultants can provide on-site or remote support including troubleshooting, training, delivery, set-up and education on your new equipment.

Each of their three locations offers complete Apple repair services by Certified Apple Technicians. Services include data transfers, back-ups, data recovery, file system repair, software installations and more.

Related articles

• The best bits from the “Steve Jobs” Biography (CraigPeterson.com)

Looking to protect your home or office? How about broadcasting real-time video? Today we spoke with Devin Chawda, the President of Y-cam about their Internet/Cloud-based Security Cameras

1. It is now possible to set up a video camera at your home or business which records instantly to the cloud rather than on some local recording device. This is a revolution in home/business security as it not only means the video is stored safely away from the property but it can be viewed from anywhere and motion alerts sent to any mobile device.
2. Anyone that wants to broadcast live steaming video to their local community, or even the world can now do so. Whether you’re a watersports shop owner on the beach wanting to show off the waves or a homeowner just wanting to share the amazing view outside her bedroom window, it’s now accessible to anyone.
3. Now you can use your iPhone/iPad/iPod Touch and your existing Wi-Fi network to monitor your baby in a way that wasn’t possible before

The study was carried out in May and involved all of the social network’s active members.

Facebook defines a user as active if they have logged on at least once over the past 28 days.

Some journalists misreported the news claiming there were 4.74 degrees of separation. However, this confused the number of degrees with the distance – or hops – between each of the people on the friendship chain.

The authors of the report say that they “assume that ‘degree of separation‘ is the same as ‘distance minus one’”.

Related articles

• Everyone In The World Is 4.74 Degrees Of Separation Apart, Not 6, Says Facebook(businessinsider.com)

  ---

• On Facebook it is 4.74 degrees of separation, not six (ebiquity.umbc.edu)

Malcom Lewis the SVP and General Manager at Spreebird. Craig and Malcom will discuss Social Media and Black Friday and how Websites, Email and Mobile can get you daily deals from thousands of merchants. About 1 in 4 smartphone owners will use a mobile device for holiday shopping, according to an annual holiday survey by Deloitte. About 59% will use their phones to compare or check prices, 46% will use phones to check product availability, and 41% will get coupons through their handsets.        Mobile search, for example, matches local businesses’ products and services with the needs of busy household managers, empowering consumers by providing valuable search environments for discovering local deals, saving time and money, and shopping smarter, during the heaviest shopping season of the year.

Nick Swinmurn the Founder of Rankd. Craig and Nick will talk about Black Friday and how you can use RNKD as a fun way to earn VIP status, discounts and rewards from the brands you love by showing them which products you already own.

Kevin Johnson the CEO at E-Bates. Craig and Kevin will discuss E-commerce and Digital Marketing. From niceties to necessities, members of Ebates benefit from incentives at top-name merchants for everything from furniture to fashion and appliances to airfare hassle-free shopping with Ebates that includes no rebate forms to fill out and no points or miles to redeem, the site supports a strong community of savvy shoppers across the country and around the world.

Amar Hanspal the SVP of Platform Solutions at Autodesk. Criag and Amar will discuss how Autodesk has taken advantage of the iPhone, iPad and the infinite computing power available in the cloud to offer companies of any size access to high performance visualization, simulation, analysis and collaboration technologies including AutoCAD WS and the Inventor Publisher Mobile Viewer App. Additionally, Mobile and web technologies are also making it possible for Autodesk to offer a new audience of amateur designers, home owners, students and casual creators access to professional strength design tools through SketchBook, Homestyler and TinkerBox.

Todd McKeller the VP North America for Mobiles Republic. Craig and Todd discuss Apps what makes them successful. Mobiles Republic quickly established a reputation for innovation and excellence in developing successful apps for the smartphone market as well as award winning apps for feature phones including the prestigious Sony Ericsson Content Award. News Republic delivers 10,000 news stories a day from over 180 major news providers, but allows users to create topic-specific “My News” streams that filter this mass of information down to the exact stories that interest them.  For example, if you create a “My News” stream for “Paul Westcott,” that stream will capture every article about Paul Westcott for you.

Michael Wong the CEO and Founder of CooTek. Craig and Michael will discuss how to enrich the functionality of your mobile devices. TouchPal Keyboard, based on CooTek’s multiple patented technology, offers a good substitution to stock mobile device keyboards. After using TouchPal  Keyboard for a while, users often find they can type faster than ever on a virtual keyboard.

Bob Schena the CEO and Co-Founder of Rajant Corporation. Craig and Bob will discuss portable wireless mesh networks that offer secure communications-on-the-move through by being able to rapidly reconfigure and adapt in real-time. Rajant’s kinetic mesh networks are a new approach to portable wireless networks where all of the components of the networks including the nodes are constantly in motion.

Sonpreet Bhatia the Co-Founder of MyCityWay. Craig and Sonpreet will discuss MyCityWay which was designed to help anyone navigate and explore the world’s cities, like never before. for example: To find a Chinese restaurant in your neighborhood, locate the nearest wireless hotspot, or buy tickets for the next showing of a blockbuster movie or even to Connect with other users to find the perfect lunch spot, keep tabs on apartments for rent, or check a live traffic feed before you leave the office.

Andy Zimmerman the Chief Marketing Officer at Brainshark. Craig and Andy will discuss how to conduct business on the go cloud-based software lets users create online and mobile video presentations – using simple business tools like PowerPoint and the telephone – and then share and track their content anytime, anywhere improving the reach and results of their business communications, while dramatically reducing communications costs.

Catherine D’Amato the Executive Director at the Greater Boston Food Bank. Craig and Catherine will discuss how the Greater Boston Food Banks distribution of food has increased from 8 to 35 million pounds of food per year and how they are using Social Media to raise awareness and involve people in their mission. They have released an app called Give a Doodle.

Todd Porter – VP Product Innovation and Marketing at QUMU. Craig and Todd will discuss Mobile Video Solutions that engage and inspire employees, improve productivity, and reduce costs Regardless of audience size, viewer device, or network configuration, Qumu simply makes video work. Only Qumu delivers the Freedom to work with existing infrastructure; the Power to reach everyone; and the Control to do it right.

Scott Hirsch the Founder of AppsBar joins Craig to discuss the gap between over-simplified apps and costly, professionally-produced apps. appsbar is the first tool for any business, group or individual to create professional, personalized apps for use on mobile devices with no cost. . appsbar is one platform to create and submit apps to popular app stores. It presents myriad personalization opportunities with a unique interface that guides creators through the entire process – from creation, to editing, to publication – with visual and textual clues at each step.

Mahesh Makhija an Associate Vice President at Infosys joins Craig to discuss end to end business solutions that utilize the best of technology. Infosys provides solutions that span the entire software life cycle encompassing consulting, design, development, software re-engineering, maintenance, systems integration, package evaluation and implementation and infrastructure management services.

PV Kannan the CEO and 24/7 Customer joins Craig to discuss a simple and easy way for companies to acquire and retain their customers, and for customers to seek solutions to their queries, anytime and anywhere in the world.24/7 Customer, Inc. is a managed services provider of online predictive experience solutions.We transform and own the outcome of digital sales and service experiences for large enterprises with thousands of call center agents. We deliver the highest CSAT at the lowest cost, and eliminate calls.

Tom Jeineck the Founder and President of On Target Web Solutions joins Craig to discuss Search Engine Optimization and Internet Marketing Solutions. At On Target Web Solutions, we are passionate about educating our clients about effective web design, effective and engaging social media campaigns, organic search engine marketing, the power of blogging, the power of permission based marketing and the power of ethical online business practices.

Jonathan Spira the CEO at Basex joins Craig to discuss collaborative Business Knowledge, which is the intersection of content management, portals, knowledge management, and collaboration. Information Overload is costing organizations billions of dollars annually as well as productivity time, which impacts the bottom line and revenue. When employees have to sort through a ton information and determine which of that data is correct, current and reliable. Searching for the correct answer or corroborating evidence can be time consuming and is no guarantee that the information is correct, which again costs organizations time and money.

Linda Rohrbough an Author and Consultant at Study by App joins Craig to talk about connecting students of all ages with bold and dynamic content. Study by App is an educational software development company that develops apps for the iPhone/iTouch/iPad. Our staff is a collective of teachers, authors, scholars, professors, and publishers from a wide variety of disciplines and backgrounds.

Sumeet Shrivastava the President at Array IT joins Craig to discuss how federal IT initiatives and impact the government and the private sector and how new and emerging technologies and leading-edge solutions can delivering best-of-the-best industry programs and practices.

Zack Urlocker the COO at ZenDesk joins Craig to discuss Cloud Based help desk software. Zendesk is the proven cloud-based help desk software that is the fastest way to enable great customer service in rapidly growing companies. Zendesk is so easy to use and their services are trusted by 10,000 organizations for their most valuable assets: customers, partners, and employees.

Thomas Swalla the COO at Savings.com joins Craig to discuss how to find the best deals on everything you want. Tell us what brands and categories you like to shop, where you live, and Savings.com will deliver the best deals for you handpicked by expert DealPros®. In addition to providing personalized recommendations, Savings.com has one of the most in-depth databases of coupons.

Dr. Rajiv Kumar the Co-Founder and Chief Medical Officer at Shape-up joins Craig to discuss the worst health problems we face as a nation–obesity, diabetes, heart disease, cancer, hypertension, osteoarthritis, depression–are related to our collective unhealthy lifestyle. Founded initially on the basic premise that people are more likely to succeed at reaching their goals when they work together with the people they care about, ShapeUp continues to stay true to its original philosophy. The company has remained focused on uniting people to improve their health while at the same time expanding its vision for the future. ShapeUp aims to build the largest platform in the world that unites individuals with their entire health care ecosystem – including their friends, family, colleagues, employer, health plan, physicians, pharmacy, health coach, and more. By creating a simple, central place to connect with the activities, information, ideas, and people that can lead us to better health, ShapeUp is working toward improving the health of the entire world.

Brad Murdoch the Chief Marketing Officer at Visible World joins Craig to discuss how to transform your advertising production giving it more relevance and delivering it with greater effectiveness. Visible World is the leading provider of targeted television advertising solutions. The company’s suite of services enables advertisers, agencies, and media companies to deliver addressable, interactive, and measurable ads.

On Show 628 Craig spoke with the following guests.

John Fishnell the VP of Project Management at Apriso joins Craig to discuss how technology is changing global manufacturing operations. Apriso’s FlexNet is a BPM platform-based software solution for global manufacturing operations management. Apriso supports global continuous improvement by delivering visibility into, control over and synchronization across manufacturing and the product supply network.

Brian Reed the CMO and VP of Products at BoxTone joins Craig to discuss enterprise mobility management. BoxTone’s single unified mobile management platform powered by patented real-time automation technology addresses the entire mobile lifecycle: mobile device management, support management, operations management and business management. BoxTone delivers real-time centralized control of all mobile devices including iPhone, Pad, Android, BlackBerry and Windows Phone devices; and the enterprise mobile applications that run on them.

Bill Anderson the CEO at Oculis Labs joins Craig to discuss commercialization of visual endpoint security technologies. Oculis Labs develops data privacy software that secures the last two feet of the Internet – the distance from the computer screen to a user’s eyes. Oculis Labs helps consumers, enterprise and government customers protect digital assets in the real world.

Ryan Scott is the VP of Marketing at Seamless, he joins Craig to discuss online food order and delivery services. Seamless has made ordering fun and easy for more than one million members and many of the world’s largest companies. Through its website, mobile web, and native mobile applications for the iPhone, Android, and BlackBerry, Seamless offers full menus, ratings, reviews, and exclusive discounts from an extensive network of restaurants in New York, Washington D.C., Boston, Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, London, and other U.S. cities. Seamless will facilitate more than $400 million in food orders from its 7,500+ partner restaurants in 2011. Seamless is an independent, privately held company.

Tyler Lessard Chief Marketing Officer at Fixmo joins Craig to discuss managing risk associated with the mobile workforce. Fixmo Inc. is the mobile risk management (MRM) company that empowers organizations to mitigate risks around mobile deployments. Using Fixmo’s solutions including its flagship Sentinel product, enterprises and government agencies ensure the integrity, compliance and auditability of every device used by their mobile workforce.

Peter Micciche the President and CEO at Certain Software joins Craig to discuss event management. Certain provides comprehensive event management solution that enables organizations to easily plan, promote, manage, and track events in an integrated, cloud-based software suite. Stakeholders at every level – planners, attendees, exhibitors, business sponsors and C-level executives – will realize more business value utilizing the event best practices and automated tools built into the Certain solution.

Mike DeVries the Chief Marketing Officer at Global Logic joins Craig to discuss Cloud based mobile applications. GlobalLogic, home to nearly 6,000 people, delivers R&D services to leading technology-enabled organizations. Since 2001, we have remained relentlessly focused on delivering innovative products, services and experiences. We work with both start-ups and technology giants, including 80% of the top global technology brands, to design and build innovative products that provide a competitive edge. With innovation hubs and design studios around the world, GlobalLogic delivers the broad range of technology design and engineering skills needed to help our clients stay ahead.

Mike Pugh the VP of Marketing at J2 Communications joins Craig to discuss cloud-based, business-critical communications and storage messaging services. j2 Global Communications offers a complete array of unified-messaging and communications services, including faxing and voicemail solutions, Web-initiated conference calling, storage messaging services, online backup, and virtual office solutions.

Ken Sun the Group Product Manager for Mobile at Intuit Personal Finance joins Craig to discuss mobile money management. Mint’s mission is to help people understand and do more with their money. Intuit has always been a customer-centric organization. Together, we’re working to get millions of Americans on track to meet their financial goals. Mint has released mobile apps for iPhone/iPad and Android.

Dr. William Jenkins the Chief Scientific Officer at Scientific Learning joins Craig to discuss How some mobile apps and games for kids – while they look like just fun – are based on learning research. Scientific Learning’s KinderSpark™ series is a collection of engaging iPad games that help young children build kindergarten readiness skills and excel in learning. Its “secret sauce” is the pairing of cognitive development research with curriculum.

Chris Holbert the CEO at SecuraTrac joins Craig to discuss a new technology to the market that brings peace of mind to families, protecting children, the elderly and pets by allowing us to know where our loved ones are located at all times. SecuraTrac® develops, markets, and sells a suite of products dedicated to bringing families closer together and improving employee safety through GPS location based technology and state-of-the-art, easy-to-use websites.

On Show 627 Craig spoke with the following guests.

Chris Holbert the CEO at SecuraTrac joins Craig to discuss a new technology to the market that brings peace of mind to families, protecting children, the elderly and pets by allowing us to know where our loved ones are located at all times. SecuraTrac® develops, markets, and sells a suite of products dedicated to bringing families closer together and improving employee safety through GPS location based technology and state-of-the-art, easy-to-use websites.

Stuart Putney the CEO and Founder of Mobylyng joins Craig to discuss HTML5 technology and its advantages for social games for mobile devices and social networks. They will also discuss which Moblyng Games have just launched on the Facebook platform.

Rachel Carollo is the Senior Director of Marketing for Fandango joins Craig to discuss the nation’s leading moviegoer destination and a unit of NBCUniversal. Fandango, the leader in the moviegoing mobile and tablet space, has seen nearly 20 million downloads of its various apps, which have won three 2011 Webby Awards.  It seems that more and more moviegoers are choosing apps as their preferred means of getting movie tickets and information.

Mark Guarnera the Executive Vice President at Vendini joins Craig to discuss the industry’s first enterprise cloud based ticketing system. Thousands of organizations utilize Vendini’s solutions for event promotion, ticket sales, and box office management of operations. The company’s suite of applications includes a fully integrated marketing system to promote events via email and social networks like Facebook and Twitter.

Brian Curry the VP of Product and Business Strategy at You Send it joins Craig to discuss business content collaboration. YouSendIt helps enterprises and business professionals streamline collaboration by enabling them to instantly sync and access content in the cloud and easily send files, share folders, and sign documents from anywhere — the desktop, Web or mobile devices.

Josh Koppel is the co-founder and Chief Creative Officer at Scroll Motion joins Craig to discuss reshaping how people experience digital information and entertainment. ScrollMotion believes technology should enable, not dictate, the creative process, they offer end-to-end solutions that help companies create and distribute across digital devices without losing what makes their brands unique.

Keith Smith the President and COO at CorFire joins Craig to discuss the mobile commerce business. CorFire offers mobile technology platforms to financial institutions, mobile network operators (MNOs), payment processors, card issuers, retailers, and other technology innovators that enable delivery of mobile commerce to the mobile phone today.  Its three core technology offerings include its Trusted Services Manager (TSM) platform, a robust mobile wallet platform, and a state-of-the-art suite of mobile marketing platform.

Gregg Dunn the VP of Project Management at Sybase joins Craig to discuss Mobile Payments. Sybase 365 is the global leader in enabling mobile information services for mobile operators, financial institutions and enterprises. The recent launch of the Google Wallet has gotten the industry a buzz about what the future of mobile payments, and a mobile wallet will look like. The mobile wallet is a technology that enables consumers to transact, interact and engage with their favorite brands

Adam Kotkin the CEO at Apps Genius joins Craig to discuss Apps and Social Gaming. Apps Genius creates innovative social games and mobile applications that let you play together with real-world friends and family using the infrastructure built by social and wireless networks. The company’s cross-platform gaming and mobile applications allow users to play and interact with the same people such user would play cards, board games or go bowling within the real world, regardless of the network they are on.

Kevin Stapleford the President of V2 Broadcasting joins Craig to discuss changing the way businesses digitally connect with their customer inside of their store. V2’s proprietary The Neighborhood® shapes a unique digital customer experience that includes customized entertainment and games along shopping content, product information and social interaction right to customers’ mobile devices.

Beth Murphy the Chief Marketing Officer at Hotels Tonight joins Craig to discuss their same-day hotel booking app that brings you the best, last-minute deals. HotelTonight is made-for-mobile and available as a free download in the Apple App Store and Android Marketplace. Perfect for business travelers, vacationers and locals alike, HotelTonight brings you deals in top hotels.

Image via CrunchBase

CNN has done a great job putting together a summary of the book outlining Steve Jobs‘ life.  To quote from the article:

“Steve Jobs,’ the biography of the late tech visionary that went on sale Monday, has already produced plenty of headlines: How Jobs met his birth father without knowing who he was, how he swore bitter revenge on Google for developing its competing Android system, and how he waited too long after his cancer diagnosis to get surgery that might have saved him.

“But the 656-page book by hand-picked biographer Walter Isaacson also contains a wealth of smaller, but no less telling, details about the brilliant but difficult Apple co-founder.

“Taken together, they build an illuminating portrait of a charismatic, complicated figure who could inspire people one minute and demean them the next. Even on their own, many of these snippets are still fascinating glimpses into an extraordinary life.

Related articles

• Steve Jobs Biographer Walter Isaacson To Jon Stewart: Jobs Was ‘An Awesomely Emotional Person’ (AAPL) (businessinsider.com)
• Steve Jobs’ Biography Hits Bookstores Today (AAPL) (businessinsider.com)
• New Steve Jobs Biography Reveals He Told Rupert Murdoch He Was ‘Blowing It With Fox News’ (mediaite.com)

Image via Wikipedia

I first started working with Biometrics back in the 1970′s in helping a graduate student develop a signature recognition system.  Back then we were using mainframes, punch cards, a TTY33 and some very grainy EBCDIC artwork to help render the signatures.  We never got very far, but we were able to make some interesting inroads.  Boy have things changed.

We’ve talked on the show before about the NFL’s ties to the FBI and CIA and how you haven’t been able to go to a Super Bowl football game in years without having your photograph taken and analyzed against a database of known terrorists and criminals.  This technology has reportedly been used to stop and arrest less than a handful of people over the course of the program.

The UK has become surveillance-central with tens of thousands of cameras capturing images of people’s faces, automobiles and tracking them as they move throughout the cities.  This information is also being used to fight crime and detour n’er-do-wells.

Now the FBI has stepped in and is planning on rolling out a national-wide Facial Recognition Service which will allow any cop on the street with a smartphone to take your photo and run it through an FBI background check.  Police vehicles will end up being equipped with cameras which go beyond their current function of running every license plate of every car within their shot to be fully integrated with the FBI and used to look up your background.  Hopefully, they’ll catch a few bad guys.

But data has a way of sticking around.

Given a few years, this database of queries against the system will contain incredible information about the movement of people throughout the country and around the world.  The government will be able to question you because they think your movements aren’t quite what they’d like them to be.  They will be able to determine where you work, which restaurants you frequent, which car you drive and much more.

Database analytics has become a very large field for the government, and with the advent of a national facial recognition service, database vendors will be able to look forward to their best growth ever.  Citizens, however, must be eternally vigilant to make sure this type of power does not become mis-used.

And the private sector?  Google, Facebook and others are pretty excited about using facial recognition to tie all of your photographs together.  Kinda nice to be able to find shots of your great aunt Lucy with your Mom and Dad, and the marketing angles are incredible.  So are the risks.

Related articles

• FBI Plans Nationwide Face-Recognition Trials In 2012 (yro.slashdot.org)
• FBI Ramps Up Next Generation ID Roll-Out – Will You End Up in the Database? (eff.org)
• Heathrow to get new facial recognition scanners (go.theregister.com)
• As Facial Recognition Improves, New Privacy Controversies Await (readwriteweb.com)
• Facebook: How To Disable Facial Recognition (laydilejur.com)
• You can run but you can’t hide! Google buys Facial Biometrics company (yourdaddy.net)
• The Future of PR… Facial Recognition? (journalistics.com)
• Cloud-Powered Facial Recognition Is Terrifying (yro.slashdot.org)

Image via Wikipedia

I’ve talked about the new electronic voting machines before on my show and with Charlie Sherman and Paul Westcott.  It’s scary to think that there’s no real audit trail on these machines, which are designed to provide a friendly user-interface and be reasonably easy-to-use.  The real problem is the lack of an audit trail.

We’ve discussed at least a half dozen serious problems with these devices which have been installed all across the country.  The most recent problem?  Direct hardware hacks.

Turns out that with a $20 bill, a technical person could build a small card which, when installed, would allow a hacker to remotely control the votes that were cast by the machine with no way to determine which votes were changed and how.

Related articles

• The scary truth about voting machine hacking risk (exclusive video) (zdnet.com)
• Indian Voting Machines With Paper Trails to Be Field-tested (pcworld.com)
• Insider Attack Against Diebold Voting Machines (schneier.com)
• Security Seals on Voting Machines (schneier.com)
• Researchers Hack Voting Machine For $26 | Fox News (trutherator.wordpress.com)
• Diebold voting machines can be hacked by remote control (salon.com)

Listen Here

Image via CrunchBase

Zenprise® MobileManager™ software is the first all-in-one platform with monitoring, device management, security and expense management for BlackBerry, Google Android, iPad, iPhone, iPod touch, Symbian and Windows Mobile.

Proven Mobile Device Management: Whatever Device You Have, We Secure It.

• Effectively manages and monitors company- and employee-owned smartphones from a single dashboard
• Get an overall snapshot of smaprtphone operations, with breakdown by device and carrier
• Automatically ‘discovers’ your entire mobile infrastructure
• Dynamically discovers new or upgraded servers, smartphones or applications as they are deployed
• Manages and secures the full mobile lifecycle: BlackBerry, iPhone, iPad , Google Android, Windows Mobile and Palm devices
• Provides a full-service Web dashboard for centralized control of employee-liable and corporate-liable smartphones and their platforms
• Repairs smartphone problems remotely to minimize user down-time and improve help desk productivity
• Embeds an Expert Knowledge base of 6,500 problem resolution workflows for rapid troubleshooting and remediation
• Provides proactive 24×7 monitoring and automated alerts to protect smartphone users from availability and/or performance problems
• Enforces security and management policies at both device-owner and department/group levels
• Enables auto-configuration of password policies on all devices, including length, complexity and encryption
• Proactively controls and monitors mobile expenses to limit unexpected costs

Mobile Productivity Regardless of Device or Location

• Manage, monitor and secure your organization’s smartphones.
• End-to-end visibility into both smartphone-specific issues and back-end network or server issues ensures mobile employees stay productive, wherever they are located.
• Roles-based views provide each support team with instant access to the tools and information they need to get the job done right.
• Users are more productive, the mobile enterprise is more secure, and you can sleep better at night.

Related articles

• Zenprise Launches New Product To Lock Down iPhones And iPads In Enterprise (techcrunch.com)
• Zenprise raises $30M to boost enterprise-grade mobile management (venturebeat.com)
• Zenprise offers iPad app for secure SharePoint access (macworld.com)

Image via Wikipedia

Brian Fuller the Editorial Lead at EE Times joined Craig to discuss The Drive for Innovation program.

Listen Here.

This is an inspired initiative in partnership between Avnet Express and UBM Electronics, has been created to showcase electronics innovation and automotive system design in the U.S. with a cross-country journey in an electric vehicle ― a General Motors Chevrolet Volt, the 2011 Motor Trend Car of the Year.

Brian Fuller, has been hitting the road in locations across the U.S. to interview engineers, entrepreneurs, innovators and students, all the while blogging and posting video updates about his experiences.  The trip details the electronic innovations behind the Chevrolet Volt and the future of plug-in electric cars.