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Produced and hosted by Jon Gordon, Future Tense brings you the latest technology topics in daily five-minute capsules. From electronic privacy and digital democracy to spam and computer worms, Future Tense keeps you up to date on the rapidly changing world of technology.
Future Tense is heard in the United States during broadcasts of the CBC's As It Happens.
Follow Jon Gordon's daily technology blog.
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A new study finds the 'Net is rapidly changing the way Americans donate to charities and get news.
The Pew Internet and American Life Project says hurricanes Katrina and Rita demonstrate the changing landscape.
Pew Researcher John Horrigan says charities received online donations from roughly 13 million Americans in the hurricanes' aftermath.
Spyware is one of today's most annoying and destructive computer problems.
Spyware gathers information about computer users without their knowledge. It often slows PCs and litters screens with pop-up ads.
The best program for fighting spyware, according to the Houston Chronicle's Dwight Silverman, comes from Redmond, Washington.
Google, the unorthodox Internet giant, has long been guided by one of its key principles -- Don't be evil.
In his new book The Google Story, Washington Post reporter David Vise says the company is beginning to struggle with the principle as it grows in power and influence.
It seems that every week brings a new service from Google.
Google Base -- sort of a free classified ad service -- is the latest. Now Google wants to develop a powerful tool to search genetic information. The idea is to aid researchers in finding specific genes and genetic abnormalities to aid in the prevention and treatment of disease.
David Vise of the Washington Post writes about the project in his new book, The Google Story.
The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation's 2005 Survey of Online Learning finds that three of five colleges and universities that offer face to face classes also offer the same courses online. And a majority of chief academic officers say online education is critical to their schools' long-term strategy.
This week, leading U.S. technology companies, including AOL and Yahoo, unveiled a plan to identify software that tracks Web use and generates online pop-up ads.
The Trusted Download Program, to be run by the organization TRUSTe, would certify downloadable software as consumer-friendly and non-invasive.
This week in Tunisia, the United Nations is conducting an international conference on the future of the Internet. Researchers from the OpenNet Initiative -- a coalition of researchers from Harvard, Cambridge and the University of Toronto -- say Tunisia is a curious place for such a gathering. It's just released results of a year-long study that shows the government routinely censors the Internet.
The fallout from a hidden copy-protection program that Sony BMG Music Entertainment put on some music CDs is getting worse. Researchers say Sony's suggested method for removing the program -- a downloadable uninstaller -- actually widens the security hole the original software created.
Sony is recalling the discs in question, but music fans who have listened to them on their computers or tried to remove the dangerous software they deposited could still be vulnerable.
Guest: Dwight Silverman of the Houston Chronicle
Political activist Eric Gunderson from Washington, D.C. believes America's cell phones should ring with the sound of their political beliefs. He's created his own ring tone, which is designed to show displeasure with the way the Bush administration handled Hurricane Katrina.
The problem with Gunderson's ring tone, however, is that it works on a very limited number of phones. U.S. cell phone companies make it hard for consumers to create and swap their own ring tones. That's where Riot Tones comes in. When it debuts next month, the service will be a do-it-yourself marketplace for political ring tones designed to work on all phones.
Two amateur musicians with an affinity for Beethoven started painstakingly converting unrecorded works into digital MIDI files. The project began merely as a way for the two men to listen to and share pieces that stayed under the radar. But after piling up more than a hundred works, they put them on a Web site in part to get the works more attention.
Mark Zimmer is a Madison, Wisconsin attorney for the state commerce department and a co-founder of unheardbeethoven.org. The project took off after Zimmer turned to the Internet to satisfy his increasing interest and curiosity for the composer.
Many tech pundits believe the Internet is undergoing a radical shift -- from the old, static Web to a more interactive environment where programs live on the network instead of your hard drive.
Guest: Michael Arrington, who writes the TechCrunch Weblog, which covers Web 2.0
The people behind the Webby Awards have named the top ten most important events in the history of the Web.
If you could write a message to yourself that won't arrive in your inbox for 20 years, what would you say?
As part of a series of stories on how people communicate, Forbes.com has set up an e-mail time capsule. Readers can write e-mail to themselves, with Forbes promising to deliver it at intervals of one, threee, five, 10 or 20 years.
It's called VitaGoat, and it's one of 25 projects being honored by Silicon Valley's Tech Museum of Innovation for making the world a better place.
Tech Award Laureates include projects that use technology to improve literacy; increase access to telescopes; provide contact lenses and hearing aids to the needy; and to make a better, safer loom for carpet weaving.
The VitaGoat is a pedal-powered food processing machine to help poor, rural third world residents supplement their diets. It's meant to be used where electricity is unavailable or unreliable.
Analysts say low-end computers won't get a lot cheaper over the holidays - but the cost of mid and high-end computers, as well as notebook PCs, will continue to drop.
The U.S. House of Representatives has voted down a measure that would have exempted online political expression from campaign finance law, with lawmakers saying the 'Net has opened up a new loophole for uncontrolled spending on elections.
The vote clears the way for the FEC to move ahead with court-mandated rule-making to govern political speech and campaign spending on the Internet.
Jim Puzzanghera, Washington bureau chief for the San Jose Mercury News, says the debate has only just begun. But he says Democrats and Republicans agree that political bloggers should not become tangled in complex federal campaign-finance rules.
What started as informal conversations over lunch has turned into the go-to Website for army commanders. Company Command and companion website Platoon Leader have more than 15,000 registered users--all of them enlisted military officers. Their collective expertise cuts through the military's legendary bureaucracy to speed up the pace of solutions for military problems. During wartime those solutions can mean the difference between life and death. Company Command started as a personal, all-volunteer site before the war in Iraq. As its influence grew, the army backed the project and made space for it in the formal training pipeline. Co-founder Major Pete Kilner says it's a sophisticated extension of discussions several commanders were already having with each other in an effort to learn and improve.
There are legendary videos on the Internet--the office worker who attacks his computer, the goofy kid with a broom handle acting like a Jedi.
These snippets burn their way through email inboxes and blog indexes racking up viewer numbers that resemble a major TV network during sweeps week. But aside from the occasional appearance at technology trade shows, the producers of these videos rarely make a dime. Revver.com hopes to change that. Revver affixes an advertisement to the videos. The company takes half of the ad sales and gives the other half to the person who made the video. Founder Steven Starr says popular Internet video are untapped opportunities for advertisers.
Other sites
As Google resumes scanning books for the Google Print project, publishers are protesting what they consider copyright infringement.
The company secured agreements with Harvard, the University of Michigan and three other public and university libraries to scan their entire collections. Google officials describe their goal as creating an online card catalog. They bill the Print effort as a way for publishers to promote their books and bring out-of-print volumes to a wider audience. The company says it will only completely scan books that are already in the public domain.
But the Association of American Publishers and the Authors Guild have filed lawsuits against Google, claiming the search company is going beyond what's allowed by copyright laws.
Jed Lyons, president of Rowman and Littlefield Publishing Group, an independent academic publisher, maintains Google needs permission from each and every author of the scanned books. He is prohibiting his company's books from being digitized to protest Google's agreements with the libraries.
