may the force be with you

A baby is to be monitored by a network of microphones and video cameras for 14 hours a day, 365 days a year, in an effort to unravel the seemingly miraculous process by which children acquire language.

Deb Roy at MIT's Media Lab, US, devised the unusual project and even volunteered his own family as its guinea pigs. Since his newborn son left hospital nine months ago, Roy's whole family has been monitored by 14 microphones and 11 one-megapixel "fish-eye" video cameras, attached to the ceilings of each room in their house.

By capturing a continuous stream of data about his son's experiences, Roy hopes to better understand the early development of language.

How babies go from gurgling at birth to fluent speech by the age of three is hotly debated. Most psycholinguists agree that simply listening to speech is not enough for a child to piece together the basic rules of a language. Yet they still argue about the importance of specific "language genes" and other non-verbal environmental stimuli.

Deleted scenes

In an effort to identify these extra environmental cues researchers have previously recorded mothers and babies playing, both at home and in the laboratory. But following babies in such an unnatural environment provides a distorted picture of their experiences, says Roy, and makes it difficult to tell whether changes in a child's speech are sudden or merely appear that way because of gaps between recordings.

To provide a more complete picture Roy has developed a surveillance network at his own home in a project dubbed "speechome". The cameras are switched on between 8am and 10pm each day and will capture 85 per cent of the baby’s waking hours up to his third birthday. For occasional privacy, Roy and his wife can switch off cameras or delete recordings using wall-mounted touch displays. A selection of video clips of the surveillance set up can be viewed here.

Footage recorded by the cameras is automatically transmitted to MIT for analysis. Computer algorithms identify activity in specific sections of each room and collect these into so-called "behaviour fragments". Human analysts then classify specific acts, such as making coffee or doing the dishes.

Unparalleled scale

Comparing footage with early sounds made by Roy's son should help his team better understand the stimuli crucial to language development. Algorithms are also being developed to automatically transcribe speech and recognise people and objects in each room.

"It allows us to put a microscope on the day-by-day and hour-by-hour changes that go into learning a language," says Steven Pinker, a psycholinguist at Harvard University, who is an adviser to the project. "Nothing remotely on this scale has ever been done."

If successful, Roy says the project could lead to better strategies for diagnosing and treating language disorders. It could even spawn computer programs that can learn to how to speak for themselves, he adds.

Roy is aware that the project raises ethical issues. But ultimately he thinks he may be providing his son with an incredible gift. "He might be the first person to have a memory that goes back to birth," he says.

source:http://www.newscientisttech.com/article/dn9167

"The new Trojan/Erazor-A has an interesting twist. In addition to deleting or disabling various security products and competing malware, it deletes any porn, warez and music in your P2P directories. While some opine that this trojan might have good intentions, remarkably few things infect the text files this trojan also deletes. No one yet knows who wrote this or why."

source:http://it.slashdot.org/it/06/05/16/0513240.shtml

"ZDNet is reporting that Google has kicked off an internship program that will see Australian university students work in projects in the company's Sydney office. Google's local head of engineering, Lars Rasmussen, said 5-10 spots would be made available, with both technical and non-technical positions on offer. ZDNet Australia also has pictures of the official opening of Google's Sydney office."

source:http://slashdot.org/articles/06/05/16/0511206.shtml

Singapore-based electronics maker Creative Technology said Monday that it has filed two legal actions against Apple Computer, charging the popular iPod infringes on its patented technology.

In a complaint with the U.S. International Trade Commission, Creative is seeking an injunction that would stop Apple from selling the iPod and iPod Nano in the United States. Separately, Creative said it has also sued Apple in U.S. District Court in California, seeking an injunction and damages.

In both cases, Creative says that the iPod and iPod Nano infringe on a patent the company has for the interface in its Zen media player, a patent granted last August.

Creative CEO Sim Wong Hoo said in December that the company would "aggressively pursue" those that infringed on its patent.

An Apple representative was not immediately available for comment.

Creative is not the first to seek a cut of Apple's iTunes and iPod revenue, citing patent issues. Pat-rights, a Hong Kong company, has said Apple's digital rights management technology infringes on its intellectual property, while another company, Contois Music & Technology, said the iTunes interface uses its patented technology.

source:http://news.zdnet.com/2100-9584_22-6072488.html

Skype users can now make free SkypeOut calls to traditional landline and mobile phones in the U.S. and Canada until the end of the year, the company announced Monday.

Skype, which offers software that allows people to talk over an Internet connection using their PCs, is trying to get more people in North America to use its SkypeOut service, which typically charges people to make calls to a traditional or mobile phone. Skype calls made between PCs are free.

Skype, owned by online auctioneer eBay, doesn't break out the number of people using its premium services such as SkypeOut. But as of the end of April, it claimed to have more than 100 million registered users, nearly double the number of registered users it had in September 2005. About 6 million of those consumers are in the U.S., said a company spokeswoman. By comparison, China has 13 million registered users and Germany has 5 million.

"Millions of consumers around the world are flocking to Skype every month," Henry Gomez, general manager for Skype in North America, said in a statement. "And we believe free SkypeOut calling will rapidly accelerate Skype adoption in the U.S. and Canada."

While Skype executives are hoping to drum up more business with this promotion, SkypeOut calling is free only until the end of 2006. What's more, calls made to and within all countries other than the U.S. and Canada will continue to incur charges at current rates.

The free SkypeOut promotion comes at a time when competitors such as Yahoo and AOL are integrating more call features into their instant-messaging clients. Starting Tuesday, AOL instant-messaging users will be able to use AIM Phoneline, a new service that allows people to make calls from their IM client to regular phones. AOL's service lets subscribers get free incoming calls from regular phones. But it charges a monthly fee to make calls to regular phones or cell phones.

While the SkypeOut service will allow free calling to regular phones, the company will continue to charge people to get calls using a service it calls SkypeIn, which costs about $38 for an unlimited 12-month subscription. Consumers can get the service for three months for about $12.80.

Skype is also trying to attract new users by enhancing its services. Last week, it released a new test version of its software that adds more features and functionality to the service.

For example, it's adding a feature called Skypecasts, which are live, moderated discussions that allow groups of Skype users to discuss shared interests. The company also added SMS (Short Message Service), integration with Outlook e-mail contact lists,

source:http://news.com.com/2100-7352_3-6072256.html?part=rss&tag=6072256&subj=news

Uncle Sam's spectrum auction opens the door for small fry like Craig McCaw's Clearwire, reversing a trend to consolidation

On May 11, 2006, a low-profile company called Clearwire Corp., headed by wireless pioneer Craig O. McCaw, filed with the Securities & Exchange Commission to go public. The initial public offering is expected to raise $400 million, and, in its filing, the company says it will use the proceeds to expand its network for offering wireless broadband services.

In particular, Clearwire says it will use the money to acquire radio spectrum, which suggests it could be one of the major bidders in a U. S. government auction of wireless spectrum this summer. "We intend to deploy our advanced wireless broadband network broadly both in terms of geography and categories of subscribers," the company said in its SEC filing. That's a big promise, but as Clearwire's SEC filing notes, giant chipmaker Intel (INTC) spent $20 million in 2004 for a stake in the company.

McCaw's Clearwire and Intel are just a couple of the players jockeying for position in the derby that's been labeled Auction 66. Scheduled to kick off on June 29, it's shaping up to be much more than just another sale of the airwaves by the Federal Communications Commission. It involves the biggest chunk of wireless spectrum ever to come up for auction in the U.S., worth an estimated $8 billion to $15 billion.

Other possible participants include Microsoft (MSFT), TimeWarner (TWX), and News Corp (NEWS). "It's likely to be the most exciting auction we've ever seen," says Richard Doherty, director of consultancy the Envisioneering Group.

MORE TURMOIL. What's grabbing the attention of such big players is that the spectrum is considered particularly valuable. Chris Hardy, vice-president and general manager of the consulting firm Comsearch, which is working with several of the bidders, says the winners could build three or more new nationwide wireless networks, offering voice service, broadband Internet access, or mobile TV services. "This spectrum is wide open to applications," says Hardy. "Virtually any wireless [technology] can be put in."

What this means is that the communications industry, after a five-year shakeout, is headed for more turmoil. Just as the wireless industry has consolidated down to three major players, the survivors could face a new crop of competitors who could kick off pricing wars and change the industry's dynamics like never before. Companies that want to participate in the auction had to express their interest to the FCC this month, but those names won't be made public until mid-June. Bidding in Auction 66 is expected to run one to two months.

Within four to five years, this auction's winners could have these wireless networks up and running, competing directly with entrenched carriers like Cingular, Verizon Wireless, Sprint Nextel (S) and T-Mobile, also expected to participate in Auction 66 (see BW Online, 05/08/06 "At Sprint, Full Speed Ahead").

THE McCAW FACTOR. In effect, this auction could wipe out two years of wireless industry consolidation, when Cingular swallowed AT&T Wireless, and Sprint acquired Nextel, cutting the number of nationwide cellular service providers from six to four. Thanks to Auction 66, the number of national wireless networks in the U.S. could potentially balloon from four to seven or more within a few years, says Hardy.

New wireless players could come from a range of industries and backgrounds. Clearwire, which wouldn't comment on the auction or its network plans, is just one of the likely bidders. Its chairman and co-CEO, McCaw, achieved fame for cobbling together cellular spectrum in the 1980s to build McCaw Cellular, which he sold in 1994 to the old AT&T for $11.5 billion. In the process, he became one of AT&T's largest shareholders. Auction 66 could mark the hatching of a similar spectrum plan, this time involving Clearwire.

Another potential bidder is small service provider Leap Wireless. On May 9, Leap announced a $250 million sale of its common stock specifically to finance participation in Auction 66. Other potential bidders could include ventures backed by Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates and Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, says Doherty. "It's a billionaires' high-stakes poker game," he says.

CABLE CALLING. While portals Yahoo (YHOO) and Google (GOOG), at the top of analysts' list of potential bidders, won't participate in the auction directly, they could play a role through partners. Both portals tell BusinessWeek Online they have not applied to take part in the auction. Still, Google is expected to participate in the auction through EarthLink, an Internet Service Provider (ISP) with which the search company has partnered to build out a wireless network in San Francisco. EarthLink would not comment on whether it has applied to take part in the auction.

Bidders are likely to include several major cable companies. On May 10, a newly formed joint venture between Time Warner Cable, Sprint-Nextel, Comcast (CMCSK), Cox, and Advance/Newhouse Communications had filed an application. The five companies partnered up last year to bundle wireless services with broadband, voice, and video services (pilots of that offering are slated for later this year).

Then, recently, they formed a second joint venture, designed to specifically look at the possibility of participating in Auction 66, BusinessWeek Online has learned. "The filing of this application does not obligate Time Warner Cable or other companies to bid in the auction, but it provides us the flexibility to take part should we decide it makes business sense to do so," according to a Time Warner statement. Analysts believe smaller cable operators may have filed applications as well.

MORE SPACE FOR MYSPACE? Finally, News Corp. (NWS) could bid for spectrum to enrich its DirecTV satellite TV offering by bundling in a wireless service, or to launch a wireless service around its newly acquired MySpace online social network, says Doherty (see BW Online, 05/12/2006, "No Space for MySpace?").

MySpace's traffic is on a tear, with the site ranking as the world's No. 6 site most-visited by Alexa.com, placing MySpace ahead of auction powerhouse eBay (EBAY) and shopping giant Amazon.com (AMZN). That's a sweet spot from which to launch a wireless service. Recently, MySpace jumped into mobile phones with the rollout of wireless service Helio. But that partnership likely doesn't preclude MySpace from launching its own mobile effort. Neither MySpace nor News Corp. answered requests for comment for this story.

The spectrum could be used to launch an array of data services, including wireless high-speed Internet access and mobile TV services. Spending on wireless data services is expected to increase from $8.8 billion in 2005 to $27.7 billion in 2009, according to consultancy IDC. "The data market is still quite young. There's a lot of growth ahead," says Craig Mathias, an analyst with wireless consultancy Farpoint Group.

OFFERING A BUNDLE. And business users are expected to be the technology's first adopters. That's the market that might be targeted by EarthLink, which recently snapped up New Edge Networks, a provider of secure network products for corporate customers, notes Doherty.

Meanwhile, cable companies might want to provide wireless service as part of their bundle of TV, voice, and data services, to better compete with telecom giants. In recent years, Verizon (VZ) and AT&T (T) have been pushing to offer video services. "A year from now, who says there won't be a Comcast Wireless?" says Doherty. Potentially, partners in the second Sprint-cable joint venture could elect to deliver the service via a different, emerging wireless network technology, such as WiMax, allowing for super-fast download and upload speeds.

WiMax is a technology that's being aggressively promoted by chip giant Intel is being used by Clearwire to sell Internet access. The chipmaker needs the net of WiMax networks to expand rapidly to encourage manufacturers of laptops and phones to use its WiMax chips, he says. An Intel spokesperson says the company won't participate directly in the auction. Still, it will have an indirect stake through the participation of Clearwire.

BARGAINING POWER. Whoever turns up for the auction, some would-be wireless service providers might elect not to operate networks themselves with their new spectrum. The auction's bidders might, instead, contract with existing wireless service providers to operate their airwaves, says Comsearch's Hardy.

An existing carrier might add some antennas to its towers, and, with relatively little expense, the new spectrum could used for additional services. An equipment industry insider believes the auction might boost gear sales by 10% to 15%, possibly benefiting Ericsson (ERICY), Alcatel (ALA), Nortel (NT), Motorola (MOT), and other telecom equipment makers.

Indeed, for would-be carriers, buying their own spectrum makes a lot of sense. The spectrum holders will enjoy more control over how their service is presented and operates. Today, most U.S. wireless carriers limit their users' bandwidth. This makes it difficult for subscribers to view movies wirelessly in real time or to give media-heavy wireless presentations.

FEWER RESTRICTIONS. A new spectrum holder could do away with such limitations. Having the spectrum could potentially allow for higher quality of data services. More important, "with spectrum dedicated to their use, [these service providers] don't have to worry about someone shutting their [communications] pipe," says Hardy.

The spectrum holders would have more bargaining power and would not have to deal with the restrictions imposed in a so-called mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) relationship, in which a company provides wireless service using a carrier's network and spectrum. Carriers such as Sprint Nextel can prohibit their MVNO partners from pursuing certain market segments or offering certain types of services that compete with their offerings directly. But a spectrum holder will have to put up with fewer restrictions, or perhaps none at all. The end result: Auction 66 could lead to greater price competition for voice services and wireless data offerings. For example, data service providers can offer easy and cheap Web-based voice calling.

In a sense, the government's new auction of wireless spectrum will be a leap back to the future. After a period of consolidation, a new crop of competitors is likely to enter the field. "We had a relatively healthy six-player wireless industry not too long ago," says Jonathan Atkin, an analyst with RBC Capital Markets. "And pricing was not overly disruptive. Plus, [the new carriers] may be targeting different niches." Eventually, the newcomers may spark a new round of mergers and acquisitions. "This may lead to additional consolidation in wireless," says Doherty. And so the cycle goes.

source:http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/may2006/tc20060515_848569.htm

Michael Morris and Jeff Lowenstein wouldn't have recognized each other if they'd met on the street, but that didn't stop them from getting into a shouting match. The professors had been working together on a research study when a technical glitch inconvenienced Mr. Lowenstein. He complained in an e-mail, raising Mr. Morris's ire. Tempers flared.

"It became very embarrassing later," says Morris, when it turned out there had been a miscommunication, "but we realized that we couldn't blame each other for yelling about it because that's what we were studying."

Morris and Lowenstein are among the scholars studying the benefits and dangers of e-mail and other computer-based interactions. In a world where businesses and friends often depend upon e-mail to communicate, scholars want to know if electronic communications convey ideas clearly.

The answer, the professors conclude, is sometimes "no." Though e-mail is a powerful and convenient medium, researchers have identified three major problems. First and foremost, e-mail lacks cues like facial expression and tone of voice. That makes it difficult for recipients to decode meaning well. Second, the prospect of instantaneous communication creates an urgency that pressures e-mailers to think and write quickly, which can lead to carelessness. Finally, the inability to develop personal rapport over e-mail makes relationships fragile in the face of conflict.

In effect, e-mail cannot adequately convey emotion. A recent study by Profs. Justin Kruger of New York University and Nicholas Epley of the University of Chicago focused on how well sarcasm is detected in electronic messages. Their conclusion: Not only do e-mail senders overestimate their ability to communicate feelings, but e-mail recipients also overestimate their ability to correctly decode those feelings.

One reason for this, the business-school professors say, is that people are egocentric. They assume others experience stimuli the same way they do. Also, e-mail lacks body language, tone of voice, and other cues - making it difficult to interpret emotion.

"A typical e-mail has this feature of seeming like face-to-face communication," Professor Epley says. "It's informal and it's rapid, so you assume you're getting the same paralinguistic cues you get from spoken communication."

To avoid miscommunication, e-mailers need to look at what they write from the recipient's perspective, Epley says. One strategy: Read it aloud in the opposite way you intend, whether serious or sarcastic. If it makes sense either way, revise. Or, don't rely so heavily on e-mail. Because e-mails can be ambiguous, "criticism, subtle intentions, emotions are better carried over the phone," he says.

E-mail's ambiguity has special implications for minorities and women, because it tends to feed the preconceptions of a recipient. "You sign your e-mail with a name that people can use to make inferences about your ethnicity," says Epley. A misspelling in a black colleague's e-mail may be seen as ignorance, whereas a similar error by a white colleague might be excused as a typo.

If you're vulnerable to this kind of unintentional prejudice, pick up the phone: People are much less likely to prejudge after communicating by phone than they are after receiving an e-mail. Kruger and Epley demonstrated this when they asked 40 women at Cornell to administer a brief interview, 20 by phone and 20 by e-mail. They then asked a third group of 20, the "targets," to answer the phone interviewers' questions. They sent a transcription of the targets' answers to the e-mail interviewers.

The professors then handed each interviewer what they said was a photo of her subject. In reality, each got a picture of either an Asian or an African-American woman (in reality, all were white).

E-mail interviewers who thought the sender was Asian considered her social skills to be poor, while those who believed the sender was black considered her social skills to be excellent. In stark contrast, the difference in perceived sociability almost completely disappeared when interviewer and target had talked on the phone.

E-mail tends to be short and to the point. This may arise from the time pressures we feel when writing them: We know e-mail arrives as soon as we send it, so we feel we should write it quickly, too. On the other hand, letters depend on postal timetables. A letter writer feels he has a bigger window of time to think and write.

Psychologists Massimo Bertacco and Antonella Deponte call this characteristic "speed facilitation," and they believe it influences our episodic memory - our ability to recall events. They found that e-mailers wrote shorter messages and were less likely to "ground their communications" in memories of shared experience than letters writers were.

The brevity of e-mail and the absence of audiovisual cues can endanger business and personal relationships unless e-mail is supplemented with the rapport that comes from more personal communication.

"Rapport creates a buffer of positive regard," says Professor Morris, "and when it's not there negotiation becomes brittle, vulnerable to falling apart."

Morris, who studies negotiation at Columbia, led a study that found that negotiators exchange more than three times the information in face-to-face interactions as they do via e-mail. Though Morris and his colleagues concluded that e-mail lets negotiators make "more complex, multiple-issue offers," they ultimately built less rapport, thereby increasing tensions and lowering the average economic value of the agreements.

Rapport "is an interpersonal resonance of emotional expression," Morris says, "involving synchronous gesture, laughing, and smiling together. Once this rapport exists, it's a buffer against a moment in the negotiation when there's some friction." This buffer is hard to develop without speaking over the phone or in person. Those who negotiated by e-mail in Morris's study trusted each other less and weren't as interested in working together again.

But the pitfalls of e-mail interaction were easily overcome by a single phone call. Morris ran a second round of negotiations, all conducted via e-mail, but made half of the corresponding pairs chat on the phone before negotiating - "just for five or 10 minutes," Morris explains, "and the key thing is we told them, 'Don't get into the issues. It's just an icebreaker.' " The result was dramatically improved agreements.

So if you want to buy something on Craig's List, Morris says, "make a brief phone call, even if it's not practical to do the whole negotiation by phone. You can establish a favorable bias with someone and then proceed in a less rich medium, but it's very hard to just get right into the negotiation on a medium that isn't rich."

source:http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0515/p13s01-stct.html