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This week the U.S. Department of Homeland Security launched its new Cyber Alert System. In the event of computer security threats, the department will send out mass e-mails about the danger, and what steps to take. We talk with Amit Yoran, who directs the department's National Cyber Security Division. He says the system had its hands full right from the start with the fast-spreading "MyDoom" computer virus, which hit this week. (Jeff Horwich guest-hosts.)

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A new article in "the fedgazette," a publication of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, says some rural cities and towns in the Midwest are "the petri dish" of the nation when it comes to wireless broadband internet technology. Monet Mobile Networks is one company that has set up shop in cities like Eau Claire, Wisconsin and Moorhead, Minnesota. We talk with Frank Jossi, who wrote the article, and with the CEO of Invisimax, a company bringing wireless internet to some very small Minnesota towns. (Jeff Horwich guest-hosts.)

Listen: Are you suffering from technoism?

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Philips Electronics says it's preparing to mass-produce a slim, book-sized display panel onto which consumers could download newspapers and magazines -- then roll up and put away. The 5-inch display, which can show detailed images, can be rolled up into a pen-sized holder.

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At Rice University, researchers are developing an artificial intelligence system that analyzes news stories and
identifies patterns of events that lead to armed conflict or all-out war. The idea is that computers can examine thousands of times more information than humans, and might do a better job at modeling future conflict.

The project, funded by the National Science Foundation, aims to use information extraction, data mining, statistical machine learning and computer modeling to predict wars four to eight weeks in advance.

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Howard Dean has made news for the innovative ways he's used the Internet to campaign, organize and raise money. But technology issues like spam, file swapping, encryption, and digital privacy have been discussed very little so far this campaign season. Declan McCullagh, chief political correspondent for CNET's News.com, says one issue that could emerge is export of white collar technology jobs to other countries.

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Security researchers say an Internet voting system for U.S. citizens overseas is so insecure that it should be
ditched.

The Pentagon developed a Web-based Internet voting system for soldiers and other Americans abroad. The
Secure Electronic Registration and Voting Experiment, or SERVE, will get its first test February 3rd in South Carolina's primary election. Six other states have signed on.


The Pentagon stands by its system, but computer security experts from Johns Hopkins University, The Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, University of California Berkeley, plus an independent researcher, claim that SERVE is highly vulnerable to malicious hackers or even terrorists. The four security experts are among 10 the Pentagon asked to study SERVE to look for vulnerabilities.

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You've probably run across so-called "rich media" advertisements while reading news Web sites like the Washington Post, MSNBC or Wired. Animated ads for tablet computers, electric razors and insurance float directly on top of the article you want to read, forcing you to close the ad or wait for it to end. It's nothing more than screen spam, according to Mike Adams, president of Arial Software.

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The CueCat, an infamous gadget, is being reincarnated. The heavily promoted mouse-like bar code scanner was supposed to revolutionize the way we shop by connecting us to information about consumer goods, giving us prices, coupons, reviews and more. But the device had to be connected to your PC, which severely limited its utility. After all, how many bar codes do you run across while sitting in front of a computer?

Now several companies, including New York-based Scanbuy, are working to bring you new bar code scanners -- but this time they'll be built into camera-enabled mobile phones.

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For a modest annual fee, you can view live pictures of the galaxies, planets and other celestial objects with powerful telescopes, over the Internet.

Slooh "consumerizes astronomy," according to company president Michael Paolucci.

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You've probably seen privacy seals on Web sites where you shop or hang out. TRUSTe and BBBOnline are the two most popular privacy seals. Companies pay for the seal -- in the cast of TRUSTe, anywhere from $500 to over $2 million depending on the size of the company. In return they must craft accepted privacy policies and agree to abide by them.

The idea behind the seals is to give consumers confidence about sharing their names, addresses, credit card numbers and other sensitive data. It's also a way for the Internet industry to head off government regulation over privacy.

Michigan State University researchers studied sites that use privacy seals. Associate professor of advertising, Nora Rifon, says the only thing those sites are really doing is agreeing to abide by their own privacy policies, which might not be very consumer-friendly to begin with.

In fact, sites that post seals ask for more personal information than sites without seals, says Rifon.

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A new study of Internet use has revealed a global online gender gap.

The World Internet Report from UCLA surveyed citizens in 14 countries and found many similarities in how people from different areas use the Internet. For one thing, more men are online than women in every country surveyed.

Another finding: Internet use cuts into TV watching.

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Apple's iPod is the best-selling, and probably just best, digital music player. It holds a ton of music, is easy to operate, and looks good. Soon, you can buy a smaller, more colorful iPod. The iPod mini will set you back about $250, only $50 less than larger iPods that hold many times more songs.

Storage-for-the-money is the biggest question mark surrounding the iPod mini, according to Eliot Van Buskirk, senior editor for CNET and author of Burning Down the House: Ripping, Recording, Remixing and More

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A year from now, we'll look back at 2004 as the year that Interent politics hit the big time, according to political consultant Phil Noble, founder of Politics Online.

Noble's other predictions for the upcoming year in Internet poltics include:

"For the first time ever, voter turn out among young people will go from below average to above average. Despite a lot of positive lip service,young people have been typically been marginalized because of their failure to get to the polls. The Internet is their medium of choice and this years online political frenzy will turn them out in big numbers."

"The Empire Will Strike Back - and it will be awesome. While Dean has gotten all the attention and the buzz, the Bush folks have quietly been getting their act together. President Bush and the GOP have 6 million email addresses and some of the sharpest minds anywhere. Chuck Defeo, Mike Connel, Max Fose and their buddies are no dummies. Assuming Dean gets the Democratic nomination, Bush and his boys will unleash an online furry. It will be quite an online war."

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A new federal government Web site offers consumers information about dangerous or defective cars, boats, toys, drugs, cosmetics, food, and more. The site features product recall news from the CPSC, the FDA, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, the EPA, the Coast Guard and the Agriculture Department.

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Is the long-promised convergence of computers and consumer electronics finally here?

At the gadget fest known as the International Consumer Electronics Show currently underway in Las Vegas, we're hearing a lot about home entertainment networks. Bill Gates weighed in on the topic, and so did a top executive from Intel, which just announced the Entertainment PC, an all-in-one device that lets users organize and store music, movies, TV shows, games and high-definition video and share content wirelessly with other devices. The company has also established the Digital Home Fund, a $200 million venture capital fund to invest in companies developing hardware and software for consumer electronics devices.

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The U.S. Army is looking for a few good robot dogs.

The Army has given $2.5 million to a couple of robotics companies to develop gear-carrying, all-terrain robots modeled after dogs. As reporter Noah Schactman writes in Wired News, it's part of a broader Pentagon program that's looking to nature for the next generation of military 'bots.

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The prestigious Berklee College of Music has launched Berklee Shares, a program that offers more than 100 music lessons on the Web free of charge. Lessons -- in text, audio and video -- range from "Rhythm Guitar Basics" to "Basic Scratching for DJ's" to "Warming Up Your Voice."

Berklee is encouraging users to share the lessons with as many people as possible through peer-to-peer networks like KaZaA.

Today I'm testing Grokker2, a new tool that categories the results of your Web searches visually.

It's a bit hard to describe. You see the results of your search in separate concentric circles. You can burrow deeper into one set of circles, or try your luck in a separate circle. For example, if you search on "Paris Hilton," one set of circles that pops up is about the Hilton hotel in Paris. Another relates to the suddenly paripatetic socialite. You can't do this kind of searching in Google.

GROKKER SCREENSHOT

I'm not convinced of its utility yet -- seems a little clunky and confusing to me. But I will continue messing with it. I have an interview with the company CEO later today. Look for it on Future Tense.

Also, let me know if you have any experience with this tool.

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The first of two twin robots sent to Mars by NASA is due to land tomorrow night. The second is scheduled to reach Mars three weeks later. They'll spend three months roaming up to several hundred miles on Mars, analyzing rocks and soil, and looking for evidence of water. While the Mars rovers are the most prominent robots of their kinds, scientists are putting rovers to work all over our planet.

Links:

Mars Exploration Project

Carnegie Mellon Personal Exploration Rover

The recording industry's legal campaign against Internet song-swappers appears to be having its desired effect.

Mary Madden is a researcher at Pew Internet, which surveyed about 1400 people for this report.

MADDEN: This was the biggest drop that we've ever seen for any Internet activity that we measure. The drop was from 29 percent of all Internet users who downloaded music in our March through May survey to 14 percent of Internet users in our most recent survey in November and December of 2003.

Does your data suggest that is directly because of the RIAA lawsuits?

MADDEN: No, there's not a direct causal relationship going on here. However, we did ask a specific question of those Internet users who continued to download and share files. We followed up and asked them specifically if the lawsuits had had an impact on the frequency of their downloading, and 18 percent of those Internet users ... said indeed they were sharing files less often in recent months because of the lawsuits. However, we certainly need to monitor this in the future. This certainly isn't the end of the story. This could be a temporary drop.

Big Champagne, a company that measures peer-to-peer activity, consistently maintains there has been no drop-off since the RIAA lawsuits. It measures actual activity on peer-to-peer networks, while your data measures what people say they're doing, right?

MADDEN: Correct. And so a portion of those who respond to our questions may indeed just be less likely to admit to downloading now. However, organizations like Big Champagne are looking at overall activity, whereas we are talking to individual users. I think we can both be right at the same time, which is to say that the overall number of people doing this might be less. But the people who continue to download might be doing so at more intense levels.

Separate data from comScore Media Metrix appears to confirm that fewer people are trading music online.

Dan Hess is company vice president.

HESS: In June of this year, we saw KaZaA, which is the leading file sharing application, on more than 34 million pc's in the U.S. alone. As of November, that number had dropped down closer to 25 million.

What does your data show about the use of legitimate pay-for-download services like i-Tunes and the new Napster?

HESS: In November, we saw 3.2 million Americans visiting Napster.com, and that service had only been re-launched since October. And Apple's i-Tunes brought in close to three million people itself in November. The RIAA, which represents record labels, says it is heartened by the studies but says it will file more lawsuits against music swappers this year.

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