Tech Talk

Satellite view of Vancouver courtesy of NASA, via Wired

If you think you get a good view of this year’s Olympics host city from the slopes, you haven’t seen anything yet.

Wired.com is offering a breath-taking, out-of-this-world tour of Olympics cities — past, present and future. And best of all, the tour is free and goes at your own pace.

Satellite technology has given us the opportunity to look at the world in a way our ancestors only dreamed of.  The technology magazine assembled dozens of images from various sources, added some descriptions and vintage artifacts to create a really memorable photo gallery.

Check it out.

It is important to understand the risks of the gadgets you are bringing into your home — and bedroom.

A lawsuit alleging that officials from a high school in an affluent area in Pennsylvania watched a 15-year-old at home on a school-issued laptop’s webcam has raised awareness of a relatively unknown risk.  Many laptops sold today have webcams built into the monitor creating for the potential of increased voyeurism.

According to an article on philly.com:

In a lawsuit filed Tuesday in federal court, the family said the school’s assistant principal had confronted their son, told him he had “engaged in improper behavior in [his] home, and cited as evidence a photograph from the webcam embedded in [his] personal laptop issued by the school district.”

The Lower Merion School District, the suit alleged, was able to turn on the webcams and illegally invade students’ privacy.

According to the publication:

A statement on the district Web site said the lawsuit’s allegations “are counter to everything that we stand for as a school and a community.”

Stephen Henderson, a law professor interviewed for the story, told philly.com that using such a camera for home surveillance “would violate wiretap laws, even if done to catch a thief.”

It is important for folks with webcams to understand how the popular device works. Some have lights that illuminate when activated, while some do not.  Many have the potential to be activated remotely.  To preserve one’s privacy, users with webcams could simple place a small Post-it note over the camera’s hole to avoid any unexpected or undesired exposure.

It is important to remember to always think of the worst-case scenarios with any piece of technology you bring into your home, because chances are someone else already is.

Google has announced its entry into the social networking arena, and confirmed the reports Tech Talk cited Monday.

Mashable has all the details and screen captures on Google Buzz.

Check them out now, and check Tech Talk later for analysis.

Google will launch a new feature as early as this week to make sharing media and updates with friends easier, the Wall Street Journal reports.

The new module, which will be integrated into Gmail, is intended to make the e-mail application “more social” by allowing users to “view a stream of status updates from people they choose,” the newspaper reported.

The new feature seems to expand off of the Google Talk application currently integrated into Gmail. 

I regularly update my Google Talk statuses to reflect what I am doing, and utilize the application to communicate with friends and colleagues — as I once did on AOL Instant Messenger.

The difference, according to the Journal, is that the development will include an area where users can sift through a stream of updates — that includes the Google-owned YouTube and Picasa services —  in a similar timeline view as on Twitter and Facebook.  It remains uncertain if updates from non-Google entities will be included.

If the development goes across networks, Mashable notes:

[T]he new features could be thought of more like a TweetDeck or Seesmic, looking to provide an aggregate view of your friends’ social media activities along with the ability to push status updates to the services you use from inside of Gmail. If not, it could be thought of as a major competitor to Twitter and Facebook as Gmail looks to covert its millions of email users into users of a whole new breed of social media service.

America must look to technology to protect its citizens and infrastructure from 21st century threats.

Dennis Blair, director of national intelligence, said that the United States is at risk of a cyberattack that could “wreak havoc,” FOX News reported Wednesday. It is substantially easier to launch a digital attack than defend against one, the intelligence czar reportedly told the House Intelligence Committee.

“What we don’t quite understand as seriously as we should is the extent of malicious cyberactivity that grows, that is growing now at unprecedented rates, extraordinary sophistication,” Blair said. “And the dynamic of cyberspace, when you look at the technological balance, right now it favors those who want to use the Internet for malicious purposes over those who want to use it for legal and lawful purposes.”

Al Qaeda could attempt to carry out an attack in America within the next six month, FOX News quoted senior intelligence officials as telling Congress on Tuesday.

Despite President Obama’s promises to make cybersecurity a priority, FOX News reports that his budget actually requests a decrease in funds for America’s cybersecurity division of Homeland Security.

Our government has for too long been reactive, rather than proactive. Just consider how the TSA operates. New policies and protocols are routinely instituted AFTER threats are made known, rather than before. The alleged Christmas Day bomber is the perfect example.

Tech Talk has reported extensively on potential cyber threats facing this country.  You can sample our cyberwarfare archives here.

As America becomes increasingly dependent on technology — to do everything from manage finances, sewage treatment plans, sustain missions in space and operate military operations, it is increasingly important to take the mounting cyberthreat seriously.  Or else, it will be too late.

Bank of America’s Web site was reportedly down for the vast majority of its customers Friday afternoon.

An estimated 80 percent of customers were not able to access their accounts at 5 p.m. ET as a result of a “major Internet outage,” the Boston Globe reports.  Issues were first reported to the nation’s largest bank around noon.

The bank tweeted early Friday afternoon: “Our website is available. However, some customers are having intermittent issues with access. We are working to determine the root cause.”

By 6 p.m., the bank was personally assuring users that “[t]here should not be any impact to the use of your debit card,” and that “[we] are working to resolve [the issue].”

A bank spokesman told the paper a cause was still not yet known, but a cyber attacked had been ruled out.

By 7 p.m., Tech Talk was able to access bankofamerica.com, although other users still reported outages.

Apple has unveiled the much-hyped and highly anticipated tablet device – known as the iPad.

“It’s a giant iPod Touch-looking device, just like we thought. Same home button, same bezel,” Erica Ogg wrote in a live-blog from within the tablet’s unveiling for CNET News.

The device, which can be oriented in either landscape or portrait mode like its iPhone cousin, could be utilized to surf the Web using the familiar touch screen navigation, Ogg wrote.

Like on the iPhone, there is a calendar an address book and access to Google Maps and, of course, the iTunes Store.

Videos could be watched, Ogg wrote, through YouTube and other sites.

It appears that it is very similar in operation to the iPhone — in terms of zooming, scrolling and syncing with computers, based on Ogg’s description. It also has a built-in iPod.

The iPad is WiFi enabled, Ogg wrote. Models will also have 3G, Ogg reported.

There will be two plans, according to CNET: 250MB of data every month for $15 or unlimited data for $30 per month. AT&T will continue to serve as the carrier. Both plans are pre-paid and require no contracts, Ogg wrote.

There are also groovy accessories — including a keyboard, Ogg reports, for folks who need to do a lot of typing.

Steve Jobs, Apple CEO and founder, said the iPad is much more intimiate than a laptop, the Wall Street Journal reports.

The Journal reports that the thin device looks like a larger iPhone:

More on the looks: Thick black border on all sides. The background of the home screen is a photo that you can set for yourself. Jobs has finished the demo and is now talking about the hardware. It’s a half-inch in thickness and features a 9.7-inch IPS display, with multi-touch sensors.

The device, which comes with as much as 64 GB of flash storage, has WiFi and Bluetooth capabilities standard, the Journal reports. It also has 10 hours of battery life and more than a month of standby life, Jobs said.

The New York Times created an app for the iPad that, according to the Journal, “looks more like a newspaper than the iPhone app — you can resize fonts, and it flows along columns. Videos accompany the stories and can be watched along side.” No mention of price, though.

iBookstore was also unveiled by Jobs, according to the Journal.  Penguin, Harper Collins, Simon Schuster, Macmillan and Hachette books will be available. CNET reports that text books will also be available.

New York Times’ Brad Stone was really impressed with iBook:

The iBooks store looks neat — plenty of colors, vivid book covers. Mr. Jobs is showing “True Compass” by Edward Kennedy, a book that was not available in the Kindle store for weeks after its release.

Among the cooler items on the device is iWork, which according to CNET, allows users to create presentations “with touch input only.” Spreadsheets could also be crafted.

16GB iPads will cost $499, Ogg reports. 32GB models will cost $599, 64GB models will cost $699; devices with 3G with cost an additional $130.

Shipments will begin in 60 days, she said. 3G models will begin shipping in 90 days.

Stone notes some of the more significant short-comings of the iPad:

• No ability to play Adobe Flash animations
• No camera
• No non-Internet phone function
• No removable battery for a device that can suck a lot of power
• No removable storage

Bottom line: The iPad looks cool and has a few neat new features, but will it be worth the price — particularly if you already own an iPhone 3GS and have a small laptop?

The hour tech enthusiasts have been dreaming about for months is almost here.

Speculation that a revolutionary must-have product will be unveiled at a keynote address slated for 1 p.m. Eastern Time Wednesday has been swirling for months.

The product, that some have predicted will be called the Apple Tablet, has faced some of the highest expectations of any technology release in recent memory.

The Wall Street Journal describes the Tablet:

Apple’s new multimedia tablet device, with a 10-inch touch screen that is expected to deliver video, text, navigation and social-networking applications, is trying to change the way much of traditional media is delivered.

Steve Jobs, founder and CEO of Apple, has been quoted as saying the new device will “will be the most important thing I’ve ever done.”

Given the unparalleled opportunities and life-saving information the iPhone put at folks’ fingertips,  it is a pretty dynamic statement.

According to the Journal: “The Apple tablet aims to reshape many corners of the media industry, just as Apple’s iPod revolutionized the music business when it made its debut in 2001.”

Learn more about the Tablet here.

And get the latest news on the anticipated news by following @bxchen and @gadgetlab.