Tech Talk

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.

Facebook, according to at least one news report, is taking down fan pages that support the man who allegedly crashed a small plane into a Texas office building.

The social networking giant could be setting a dangerous precedent by restricting the speech of its users if the report disseminated by the reputable Breaking News Twitter account attributed to NBC News is true. As Facebook becomes the modern-day water cooler across America and around the world, it is becoming increasingly important to foster conversations — of all perspectives.

While Tech Talk would never condone the alleged actions of Andrew Joseph Stack, simply stating opinions should not be restricted.  In fact, such actions will likely make the situation worse as users could feel further ostracized and go further underground.  It would be better to have such conversations carried out in open.

It has been widely reported that Stack crashed a plane into an Austin office building with federal offices around 11 a.m. ET Thursday.  At least eight people were injured, according to the Statesman, and at least two people died, possibily including the pilot.  The newspaper reported that officials said the incident “appears to be an intentional act, appears to be by a sole individual, and it appears this individual was targeting federal offices inside that building.”

While it is still not certain what exactly the respective groups are stating, if they are simply discussing the act of domestic terrorism and not encouraging similar actions, it seems that they would not pose a threat to national security. 

America is founded on the freedom of speech, and such expression should be protected whether it is favorable or not, so as long as it does not encourage violence.

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.

Nexus One image courtesy of Google.

Rejoice!

Google’s new smart phone, the Nexus One, is now available for purchase. 

You could take a virtual tour of the phone here.

But before you run out — or, more accurately, log on – and give the search engine $530 for an unlocked version that is said to work with “nearly all” GSM SIM cards, (or send T-Mobile $180 and get locked into a two-year contract,) I suggest reading Wired’s detailed review here.

For more analysis and a comparison of how the Nexus One stacks up among other smart phones, I recommend checking out an article in the Wall Street Journal here.

And then, if you ultimately decide to get the phone, send your review to Tech Talk.  We would love to hear from you.

As our society comes to expect to know what is happening immediately, it is growing increasingly important for search engines to deliver that information or risk losing its audience.

Shortly after parts of Times Square were evacuated earlier Wednesday over concerns of a suspicious van that turned out to pose no safety risk hours before the country turned its eyes toward the crossroads of the world, a technology writer entered “Times Square” into the query boxes for Google and Bing.  Guess who had the most relevant information, or for that matter, the only pertinent information.

If you guessed Bing, you are correct! 

According to TechCrunch’s Erick Schonfeld, Google returned old news results about New Year’s Eve preparations whereas Bing offered timely articles from ABCNews and CNN about the still developing story.

While Google had the relevant information on its site, it was buried and not easy to find.  Bing successfully delivered the most relevant news to a person yearning for it.  While Google still controls a substantially greater market-share, the search engine giant should not forget about its core business — Internet searches.

Real-time searching will play an increasingly prominent role in our society as more people sign on to social networking, and Google needs to recognize that.

If Google drops the ball too often, people may begin to become accustomed to turning to Bing for timely and relevant news queries — and then day-to-day searches, just as folks turned to Google over Yahoo not so long ago.

The American justice system is facing a threat that could result in the incarceration of the innocent and freedom of the guilty.

Graphic courtesy of California Court System

For years, judges have instructed juries to refrain from reading newspapers or watching local television news to preserve each defendant’s right to a fair trial.  However, the Internet threatens to strip our society from that inherent right of all men, women and children.

As Americans, and particularly folks from Southwestern Connecticut, become increasingly connected, it is becoming more difficult to avoid tainting a jury pool.  Countless blogs, tweets and Facebook statuses are disseminated everyday on a variety of topics — in an unpredictable manner.  As an example, a Tech Talk post from last week reported that almost 100 million words a day were posted in Facebook status updates at the beginning of the year.  It is impossible to anticipate the information one will find by logging onto the net.

For this reason, judges need to instruct juries to not just avoid – but stop visiting blogs and social networking sites – during their service as a juror.  Who knows, as was mentioned in a Tech Talk post earlier this week, it might even do the jurors some good to cut their digital leash for a little while.

The Internet also allows people, jurors included, to find supplemental information.  Jurors should be banned from using the net to find more information on the case they have been selected to offer a judgement on.

A TIME article reported that one juror doing research led to a mistrial in Miami.  This juror should be imprisoned.  It may seem harsh, but such actions threaten the very integrity of this country’s jury system — it’s that simple.  Think that juror’s actions were an isolated incident?  Think again! It was determined that at least nine of the 12 jurors Googled after hours.  America needs to get serious on this issue.

In another instance cited in the same article, a New York City juror sent a Facebook friend request to a witness during deliberations.  Following a guilty verdict, the defense team tried to get the verdict overturned, according to the article.  If the request had been granted, a potentially guilty person could have gone free and threatened the innocent.  If this person was innocent, someone who should not have been jailed was. How would you like to be imprisoned for something you did not do because of Facebook?  Either way, it is clear that judges need to prohibit jurors from utilizing social networking sites entirely during trials — and make clear that any use of the Internet, or any other means, to get supplemental information or to connect with people involved in the case will be a jailable offense.

Technology makes tracking Santa Claus as easy as entering a few key strokes and clicking through a few screens.

Photo courtesy of NORAD

The North American Aerospace Defense Command, or NORAD, is tracking the big man is red from Peterson Air Force Base in Colorado.

NORAD, which was established by the governments of Canada and the United States, has been tracking the jolly old elf since its formation in 1958. Prior to that, the military organization’s predecessor, CONAD, tracked Santa since the Sears Roebuck & Co. inadvertently encouraged children to call the CONAD Commander-in-Chief’s operations hotline in 1955.  Col. Harry Shoup, according to NORAD, had his staff check for indications of Santa and gave children his current location.

NORAD utilizes its high-tech equipment, including radar, satellites, Santa Cams and even fighter jets, to monitor Claus’ movement, NORAD reports.

The North Warning System alerts the military when the international traveler takes off using 47 installations strung across the northern border of North America.

Once NORAD confirms take-off, the agency’s cutting-edge technology does the rest.

And once he arrives in North America, Canadian fighter pilots greet Santa Claus, NORAD reports.  When he crosses the border into the United States, a few lucky American NORAD pilots fly alongside his sleigh and tiny reindeer,

You can track Santa Claus by clicking here.

A federal appeals court upheld a $200M  judgement against Microsoft Corp. and issued an injunction that will stop the technology giant from selling some of its Word software until it is altered, the Associated Press reports.

The injunction will go into effect against the world’s biggest software maker on Jan. 11, the wire service reported in the past hour.

Microsoft had appealed a jury decision in favor of I4i LP, a Canadian company, that successfully argued recent editions of Microsoft Word had infringed on a patent, according to the AP.

However, the court ruled that the decision does not affect copies of the programs sold before the injunction goes into effect, the AP reported.

Word, which is part of the Office suite, is used by more than 500 million people, Bloomberg News reported.

As a result, Microsoft has argued that the injunction will not just only hurt the company but also the public, the AP reported.

However things might not be as bad for consumers as Microsoft may be making them out to be.

Bloomberg reported:

Copies of Word 2007 and Office 2007, with (a feature allowing for the customization of the markup language XML) removed, will be available for U.S. sale by Jan. 11, and “beta versions of Microsoft Word 2010 and Microsoft Office 2010, which are available now for downloading, don’t contain the technology covered by the injunction,” said company spokesman Kevin Kutz.