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Gmail can scan images to stop confidential data being leaked
Businesses do a lot to secure their operations, but often it just takes one rogue employee to send themselves confidential files and they're doomed. Google launched its Data Loss Prevention (DLP) service to help companies avoid such a calamity, and now it's getting even more powers to avoid data losses. With the update, Gmail will be able to scan documents with optical character recognition to make sure attached images don't contain sensitive information like social security numbers or passwords.
Sony hack snowballs as movie scripts, celebrity phone numbers leaked
Sony Pictures is in full-blown damage-control mode and has called an all-hands meeting following another huge leak of sensitive, confidential info. The new trove of data released by the so-called GOP (Guardians of Peace) includes more private employee info, actor phone numbers and traveling aliases, legal claims against Sony Pictures, film budgets, scripts and more. As pointed out by the WSJ, it also includes private info of some 40,000 Sony Pictures ex-employees like home addresses, previous salaries and social security numbers. Many of those folks are incensed with the Culver City-based company, which gave them no guidance on how to protect their identities or sign up for credit monitoring.
ZeroTouch 'optical multi-touch force field' makes a touchscreen out of just about anything
The rise of tablets and smartphones has made the touchscreen a rather ubiquitous interface, but they aren't everywhere quite yet. A group of students from Texas A&M intend to change that, however, with the invention of ZeroTouch: a seemingly empty picture frame that lets you turn any surface into an interactive touchscreen. It might not look like much, but ZeroTouch is packing a series of pulsing LEDs and infrared sensors that turn that blank space into a highly sensitive surface. Basically, the strategically placed LEDs cover the open area in a sheet of invisible light. When a hand or stylus enters the picture (or lack there of), those beams are interrupted, providing cues to a piece of software that tracks the object's movement -- and boom! You've got a touchscreen. Of course, this isn't the sort of thing that's going to make it to market anytime soon, but you can check out ZeroTouch rocking the rippling water effect in the video below.
Touch pad prototype works without movement, makes fingertips feel like they're sliding (video)
This comes from the same touchy-feely Kajimoto lab in Japan that brought us the tactile kiss transmission device and we totally see where they're going with it: maximum sensation, minimum effort. You only have to exert the gentlest of pressures on this prototype touch pad and it zaps your fingertip with little electrical signals, mimicking the feeling of sliding your finger over a surface. We imagine it's a bit like the little red pointing stick in the middle of a Lenovo ThinkPad keyboard, for example, but with the addition of "position-dependent data input" to create the illusion that your finger is actually touching different areas of the screen. For now though, if you don't mind stretching a finger to your old-stylee mouse or trackpad, then check out the video after the break.
Bee venom used to create ultra-sensitive explosives sensor
We knew that well-trained bees were capable of sniffing out dynamite and other explosives, but researchers at MIT have now come up with a slightly less militant way to use our winged friends as bomb detectors. A team of chemical engineers at the school recently developed a new, ultra-sensitive sensor that's sharp enough to detect even one molecule of TNT. Their special ingredient? Bee venom. Turns out, a bee's poison contains protein fragments called bombolitins, that react to explosive compounds. To create the detector, researchers applied these bombolitins to naturally fluorescent carbon nanotubes. Whenever an explosive molecule binds with the protein fragments, the interaction will alter the wavelength of the carbon cylinder's fluorescent light. The shift is too small for the naked eye to pick up on, but can be detected using specially designed microscopes. If it's ever developed for commercial use, the sensor could provide a more acute alternative to the spectrometry-based detectors used at most airport security checkpoints. At the moment, however, the technology isn't quite ready to be deployed on a widespread basis, so feel free to keep on living in fear. Full PR after the break.
Apple patent shows new "smart bezel" for tablets
An Apple patent was published this week that details a touch sensitive, smart bezel for its tablet devices. The bezel would include touch sensors, pressure sensors, light emitters, haptic actuators and accelerometers. With this array of embedded sensors, a user could touch the bezel and control volume, adjust brightness and more. This patent also describes the use of the bezel to wake up a device, unlock a device and toggle a device on and off. Such a design could allow for the development of a home button-less iPad, a device that was rumored earlier this year by BGR. The smart bezel is similar to, but more advanced than the touch-sensitive gesture area of the Palm Pre Plus and the Pre 2. This type of smart housing may also make its way into Apple's notebook line where embedded sensors would be used to detect I/O activity. This is not the first patent to introduce the use of an intelligent bezel in a tablet device. Earlier this month, Apple was awarded a patent for a bezel that controls volume, adjusts brightness, lets a user zoom, and even functions as a game controller. An earlier patent describes touch-sensitive areas that could replace buttons on a device such as the iPad. Together these patents suggest Apple is looking at alternative input mechanisms that could drive the next wave of innovation in the tablet market. [Via Cnet]
NASA's shuttle PCs sold with sensitive data intact, insert WikiLeaks joke here
Let this be a warning for John and Jane Q. Public (always a cute couple, those two) to always wipe sensitive / secret data from your hard drives before selling a computer. Or better yet, take out the drive entirely and physically destroy it. That's what we'd expect from our government entities, but an internal investigation found that a number of PCs and components from NASA's shuttles had been sold from four different centers -- Kennedy and Johnson Space Centers, and Ames and Langley Research Centers -- that "failed sanitization verification testing," or weren't even tested at all. In Langley's case, while hard drives were being destroyed, "personnel did not properly account for or track the removed hard drives during the destruction process." Meanwhile at Kennedy, computers were found being prepped for sale that still had "Internet Protocol information [that] was prominently displayed." Helluva way to start a shuttle launch retirement, eh?
Robo-nurse gives gentle bed baths, keeps its laser eye on you (video)
When they're not too busy building creepy little humanoids or lizard-like sand swimmers, researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology like to concern themselves with helping make healthcare easier. To that end, they've constructed the Cody robot you see above, which has recently been demonstrated successfully wiping away "debris" from a human subject. The goal is simple enough to understand -- aiding the elderly and infirm in keeping up their personal hygiene -- but we'd still struggle to hand over responsibility for granny's care to an autonomous machine equipped with a camera and laser in the place where a head might, or ought to, be. See Cody cleaning up its designer's extremities after the break.
Apple granted patent for touch-sensitive bezel
The Patently Apple website is reporting that Apple has been granted patents dealing with tablets and advanced touch technology. The first patent concerns an 'intelligent bezel' where a user could control volume, brightness, zoom or even controls for games by sliding a finger along the edge of the device. A second patent was also granted for tracking multiple finger and palm recognition as hands approach, touch and slide across a multi-touch surface. Taken together, the patents hint that Apple is working on some very futuristic hardware and software platforms that go beyond the simple touch screens Apple offers now. When you look at the current iPad, you see a very wide bezel that has no touch functions now, but it is easy to imagine how a future tablet could incorporate the new features. Now, if they can just get a camera in there... [Via MacRumors]
Leo Burnett's rain-sensitive cosmetic billboard
Advertising agencies are trying everything from window shopping to fiber-optic cement walls to LEDs outlining a building in order to catch the ever-wandering eye of the consumer. The Leo Burnett agency, a graphical genius of sorts, has its latest breakthrough concept plastered on a Max Factor cosmetic billboard. The pictured woman sports finely groomed eyelashes when kept dry, but rainy weather creates black runs akin to real life scenarios to presumably suggest that ladies should make haste in picking up the run-resistant flavor of makeup. So if you're trying to focus on important things like pedestrians and oncoming traffic while cruising through a torrential downpour, just make sure to not point and stare too awfully long.[Via Core77]
