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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.
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Today: PC World's five greatest gadgets:
Portable music players are so cheap and ubiquitous today that it's hard to remember when they were luxury items, widely coveted and often stolen. But when the blue and silver Walkman debuted in 1979, no one had ever seen anything quite like it. The $200 player virtually invented the concept of "personal electronics."
PC World magazine has published it's take on the 50 greatest gadgets of the past 50 years. In order for gadgets to be considered for the 50 greatest list, they had to be relatively small and portable, and something PC World would have written about if it had been published when the gadgets came out.
Today, we focus on gadgets ten through six. Tomorrow, the top five.
Number six on the list: The Polaroid Land Camera SX-70.
The SX-70 was a thing of beauty. Just point, shoot, and watch the image develop before your eyes. When you're done, fold up the 7-by-4-inch unit and stick it in your bag. It was the first Polaroid to automatically eject the snapshot and produce images, without making you wait 60 seconds and peel off the outer wrapper of the film. The SX-70 combined simplicity with immediacy, making it the direct forebear of today's low-end digital cameras.
New research from the Pew Internet and American Life Project indentifies some key differences in the way men and women use the Internet. Among the findings:
More than men, women are enthusiastic online communicators, and they use email in a more robust way. Women are more likely than men to use email to write to friends and family about a variety of topics: sharing news and worries, planning events, forwarding jokes and funny stories. Women are more likely to feel satisfied with the role email plays in their lives, especially when it comes to nurturing their relationships. And women include a wider range of topics and activities in their personal emails. Men use email more than women to communicate with various kinds of organizations.
After a fruitless search for free audio books online, Hugh McGuire started Librivox, a project of amateur readers who record public domain books and poems. About six months old, Librivox has a library of two dozen works, including Jack London's "The Call of the Wild" and Mary Shelley's "Frankenstein." Librixox uses volunteers from around the world, who record a chapter or two. The files are offered in multiple file formats, and via podcast.
Many of the new computers given as holiday gifts this season are bloated with unwanted trial software. At best, junkware makes your machine a little cheaper. At worst, it can seriously impede performance.
Federal regulators say spam is levelling off or even declining. The Federal Trade Commission says the antispam law that took effect two years ago has helped curb unsolicited e-mail. Its report also credits advances in technology, such as better spam filters.
Some spam fighters are critical of the report. E-mail security firm Cloudmark says it sees no evidence that spam is waning.
The Digital Universe aims to be a vast collection of wordly knowledge -- sort of an encyclopedia but with advanced Web browsing technology. Likely to take a decade or more to build, the project will feature material from educators and academics, as well as members of the public. If it sounds a little like the collaborative online encyclopedia Wikipedia, that's no coincidence. One of the brains behind Wikipedia has signed onto Digital Universe.
The technologist behind the site is Joe Firmage, founder of Internet company USWeb who holds widely scorned beliefs that many high tech advances come from space aliens. The project's president says that shouldn't affect the credibility of Digital Universe.
Bernard Haisch says Digital Universe is meant to provide a serious, academic antidote to today's Web.
After analyzing its traffic, Google discovered a large number of users conduct music-related searches. So the company has unveiled a music search feature that makes it easier to find record reviews, artist bios, lyrics and related information.
Engineers at computer repair company Ontrack Data Recovery get some bizarre cases. They've compiled a list of their top 10 most interesting data disasters. They involve dogs, hammers, cockroaches and a Major League Baseball team.
Laptop computers, door locks, and even some supermarkets authenticate users by scanning their fingerprints. But it appears fingerprint security systems can be easily tricked. Clarkson University computer scientist Stephanie Schuckers says she fooled fingerprint ID readers nine of out ten times with just a little Play-Doh.
A recent Consumer Reports survey shows about one in three Americans are thinking about ditching their current cell phone company. It's not an easy thing to do, so we asked Consumer Reports electronics editor Paul Reynolds for some help. Reynolds says Verizon scored best in a recent survey of cell phone users in 18 cities, but that doesn't mean Verizon is best for everyone.
Security experts say a new variant of the prolific e-mail worm called Sober will strike next month.
A worm is a type of computer virus that spreads by sending copies of itself over the Internet. Sober has been slowing and crashing computers since 2003.
Security firm iDefense says the new attack is set for January 5th, the 87th anniversary of the founding of the Nazi party. Sober appears to be designed to promote a Neo-Nazi agenda.
A new report from technology research firm IDC says software piracy is hampering economic growth around the globe.
IDC says more than a third of the world's software is pirated, and says stolen software is increasingly an organized business. IDC says a worldwide reduction of software piracy by 10 percentage points to 25 percent could generate more than two million jobs.
iPods are proving to be a popular purchase again this holiday season, but there are some very viable alternatives to the ubiquitous digital music players from Apple. Brian Cooley reviews gadgets for CNET. He likes these players:
The U.S. Department of Transportation is testing a program to track vehicles wherever they go using global positioning satellites. It's funding pilot programs in two Western states, and is set to announce more grants totalling $11 million dollars.
The idea is to know which vehicles are racking up the most miles, or driving in peak traffic times, to assess new fees based on mileage.
Declan McCullagh, chief political correspondent for CNET News.com, wrote about GPS vehicle tracking in a column this week.
More than half of Americans surveyed by Consumer Reports say they're unhappy with their cell phones. The annual report, to be published in Consumer Reports January issue, says the recent merger between AT&T and Cingular introduced new service problems for thousands of people.
University of Washington biology lecturer Greg Crowther believes in the power of song to teach about metabolism, neuroscience and energy production in muscle cells. Crowther has written many songs about science that you can find on the Internet. In fact there are thousands of science songs out there on the 'Net. Some are meant to instruct, others to entertain. Nearly all have a high cornball factor.
The Minnesota-based National Institute on Media and the Family released its tenth annual Video Game Report Card this week. It gives poor grades to game makers, the ratings system, and retailers.
Canadian musician Jane Siberry is no longer selling or making CDs. All of her songs published since the early 1980s are available for download on her Website only. The twist is that fans can pay whatever they want for a song - including nothing. Siberry calls it "Self-Determined Pricing."
