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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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Research firm Ipsos says one in five Americans ages 12 and older owns a portable digital music player. That's up from about one in 10 Americans in 2003, the year that online music store iTunes debuted. The Ipsos study says a strong consumer interest in video and other new content should drive ownership even higher.
Consumers wanting to ditch old printers, PCs or other electronics gear made by Dell Computer will soon be able to recycle them for free. Chairman Michael Dell announced the new policy yesterday.
Under Dell's previous policy consumers could only get free recycling of any brand of computer or printer if they bought a new Dell system. The new recycling policy, already available in Europe, is set to begin in the U.S. by September and the rest of the world by November.
Industrywide, companies have begun adopting more affordable recycling policies to prevent cadmium, mercury and lead and other hazardous materials contained in many electronics from ending up in landfills as so-called "e-waste."
Guest: Elizabeth Grossman, author of the new book HIGH TECH TRASH: DIGITAL DEVICES, HIDDEN TOXICS AND HUMAN HEALTH
A new survey finds that PCs have become more reliable in recent years as manufacturers have improved designs. However, one in every six new notebooks still needs to be repaired within a year after purchase.
Research firm Gartner says failure rates of both desktop and portable notebook computers have improved in the 2005-2006 period compared with
2003-2004.
Analyst Leslie Fiering says a failure is defined as a repair incident in which a component needs to be replaced, ranging from something as
trivial as a notebook latch or as significant as a motherboard.
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Microsoft has unveiled plans to deliver on the company's ambitions to simplify how workers communicate with one another. The company announced partnerships with Hewlett-Packard, Motorola and other device makers to provide the necessary hardware to work with its software to integrate e-mail, faxes, instant messaging, voice calls and other communications over the Internet.
Guest: Ina Fried, CNET News.com
Researchers at Georgia Tech have come up with a technology to help reduce the bootlegging of movies. The system detects the sensor in a digital camcorder, and then shoots a beam of infrared light at its lens, preventing the would-be-pirate from making a useable copy of the film. The image-destroying device could be used in many other ways, such as preventing corporate espionage. But there is a potential for abuse.
Researchers at the Georgia Tech Research Institute have developed a machine that destroys a hard disk in a just few seconds. GuardDog uses a 125 pound magnet which scrubs magnetic media of all data. That includes hard drives, video and audio tapes, and USB thumb drives. The large machine is being built with national defense in mind, but could be used by civilian companies as well. Researcher Michael Knotts says there are times when the military and intelligence agencies need to quickly and completely destroy sensitive data.
MySpace is planning new restrictions on how adults may contact its younger users in response to growing concerns about the safety of teenagers who frequent the popular social networking site.
Several social networking competitors have cropped up recently, trying to take advantage of the safety concerns surrounding MySpace. The newest is imbee. It's intended for users aged 8 to 14. The site gives parents a significant level of control over what their children do on the site. Users can set up blogs, share photos, create avatars, and communicate with friends.
The new social networking site MOG launched this week with the aim of connecting people based on their taste in music.
Started by former MTV executive David Hyman, MOG requires users to download an application that catalogs the music on their computers, monitors what they play the most and what new tunes are added through downloads. The data is posted to users' public MOG Web pages.
Hyman says people want to meet others who have similar taste in music.
Ajax is a software development tool that allows users to run full-featured programs in their Web browsers. Whereas Microsoft Word is a bloated program that takes up lots of space on a hard drive, the Ajax-enabled word processing application Writely works in your browser.
Ajax is behind Google Maps and the instant messaging tool Meebo. Other Ajax applications do e-mail, calendars, and games. Ajax is attracting more software developers and venture capital.
Guest: Ryan Asleson, a Twin Cities-based software developer and co-author of Foundations of Ajax and Pro Ajax & Java.
A British newspaper reported last week that labor conditons are poor at a Chinese factory that make the popular iPod music players.
The Mail reported that employees at a Chinese factory that manufactures iPods work 15 hour days, are paid as little as $50 a month, and live in dorms where they are not allowed to have visitors.
A watchdog group, Sweatshop Watch, says those conditions are not unusual at Chinese electronics factories.
Apple is investigating the accusations. A company statement reads:
"Apple is committed to ensuring that working conditions in our supply chain are safe, workers are treated with respect and dignity, and manufacturing processes are environmentally responsible ... We do not tolerate any violations of our supplier code of conduct."
How is this news playing among Apple's devoted fans? I put that question to Leander Kahney of the Cult of Mac blog.
A Japanese inventor who opened the way to a new generation of energy-efficient light sources is the winner of the $1.26 million Millennium Technology Prize, the world's biggest technology award.
The Helsinki-based Millennium Prize Fund chose Shuji Nakamura, who now works at the University of California Santa Barbara, for his inventions on revolutionary new light sources.
The last winner of the prize, which is handed out every two years, was Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the Worldwide Web.
A new study finds that a large number of U.S. companies pay someone to read employees outbound e-mail. Forrester Consulting conducted the study for e-mail security company Proofpoint.
A new report from Microsoft finds that millions of computers have been enslaved and forced to perform evil deeds.
Microsoft says more than 60 percent of compromised Windows PCs scanned by its Windows Malicious Software Removal Tool in the first three months of this year were were running malicious software that turns the machines into tools for computer criminals.
Alan Paller with the Sans Institute, a nonprofit computer security think tank, says miscreants use these "zombie" PCs for a wide range of acts.
Paller says there are a few things you can do to prevent your computer from becoming a zombie:
1. Don't open e-mail attachments from unknown senders.
2. Don't click on links in e-mails. Copy and past them into your browser instead.
3. Update your software applications immediately when prompted by the programs themselves.
4. Download and install the DropMyRights app.
Listen in RealAudio
Mentos mints, GM cars and the upcoming movie Snakes on a Plane are among products getting some serious exposure in so-called viral videos on the Internet. While some companies see Internet videos as a threat, others are trying to attach themselves to the latest craze on the Web, which is being fueled by online video sites like YouTube and Google Video.
This month Hotels.com announced that a machine with credit card numbers for a quarter million customers got lifted from an accountant's car. Last month the federal Veterans Affairs revealed personal information for nearly 27-million veterans was on a laptop nicked from an employee's home. There's also the case of the stolen machine containing bank account information and credit card numbers for 65,000 YMCA users in Rhode Island and Massachusetts. Rick Fleming, vice president of security for San Antonio-based Digital Defense, Inc., says these are among the reasons companies are losing the public's trust when it comes to protecting personal data.
It's that time of year when digital cameras are burning through lots of batteries, at ball games, picnics, family reunions and summer vacations. With better technology and ever-lower prices in the marketplace, it's a good time to be an amateur photographer.
Guest: Terry Sullivan, lead digital photography analyst for PC Magazine
Last week a California appeals court bolstered the legal status of bloggers and other online journalists, saying they are entitled to the same protections as mainstream journalists. The court rejected Apple Computer's bid to identify the sources of leaked product information that appeared on two Web sites.
Two years ago, Apple went to court seeking to identify the culprits behind the leak of confidential information about an unreleased product to online media outlets. Apple argued that it was entitled to identify the sources, presumed in this case to be company employees, because the leak constituted a violation of trade secrets. A lower court last year ruled in Apple's favor.
Michael Geist, Canada Research Chair of Internet and E-commerce Law at the University of Ottawa, says the California court ruling will have far-reaching implications.
A new service called GotVoice delivers your cell or home phone voicemail messages to your computer. Internet phone services such as Vonage offer a similar feature, but GotVoice is bringing it to mobile phones and plain old telephone lines.
GotVoice is easy to use and free. Premium accounts allow users to bypass ads that appear on their screens, and they give users more control over how frequently they can check their messages.
Prince will be honored with a lifetime achievement award at this year's Webby awards for his use of the Internet to distribute music and connect with audiences.
Tiffany Shlain, founder the Webby awards, says Prince recognized early on that the web would completely change how we experience music.
Another musical act will be collecting a special Webby on Friday. It's the cartoon character-fronted group the Gorillaz.
The awards ceremony is now in its 10th year. Others receiving special awardsfor their Internet efforts include New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman and the founders of the popular social networking company MySpace.
Wired Magazine has long been the chronicler of the cutting egde of digital technology. But this month's issue features a story about the science of the schmear.
Joshua Davis writes about new research that will change cream cheese forever.
We're supposed to protect our PCs from viruses, worms, spyware, and pop-up ads by using antivirus software, turning on our firewalls, avoiding clicking on unsolicited e-mail attachments, deleting spam and the like. What would happen if we did the exact opposite - if we said, in effect, bring it on?
Denver resident Steve Knopper wanted to know. So he got himself a new $500 Dell Dimension and embarked on an 18-day saga to poison the machine to death with malicious software. It's his idea of entertainment.
Knopper wrote about his experiment in Wired.
