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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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If you've been seeing some Google search results that don't look quite right, chances are good they were a part of a campaign to deliver malicious software to people's computers.
Attackers designed these infectious sites to show up on Google when users searched on terms like "Christmas gifts."
Computer security researcher Alex Eckelberry with Sunbelt Software says the scale of the attack is staggering.
Verizon Wireless this week announced that customers will be able to buy phones of their own choosing and run them on Verizon's network. Until now, U.S. wireless providers like Verizon let customers pick only devices they approve.
Consumers have been voice growing frustration with closed networks that limit choice in phones and phone features. CNET's Tom Merritt says Verizon's motivation is not altruistic.
Lingro lets users read Web sites and click on any word for a translation. The new Web-based service works in English, Spanish, Italian, German, French and Polish. The site uses open dictionaries, so users can help fill in missing words.
Lingro co-founder Arthur Janc says the primary audience for the site is language learners.
(WordChamp offers a similar service. Tell us if you know of others).
Security company Air Defense says half of 3,000 retail stores it secretly monitored at major shopping centers in the U.S. and Europe use wireless data systems vulnerable to malicious hacking. And an independent analyst says the findings are "significant."
The data that stores routinely transmit on wireless networks includes customer credit card numbers and other sensitive information.
A new Web site promises to let consumers opt out of catalogs they don't want getting stuffed in their mailboxes.
Catalog Choice is backed by the National Resources Defense Council, the National Wildlife Federation and the Ecology Center.
Other resources for consumers:
One of the best computer bargains right now is at Walmart, where you can buy the gPC, without a monitor, for $199. But it's not your average PC. It runs gOS, a version of the open source operating system, Linux, instead of Windows Vista. And it's not loaded down with software: this machine is meant to conducts its business almost exclusively on the Internet.
Dwight Silverman reviewed the gPC in the Houston Chronicle.
A report in the Wall Street Journal says Google is interested in building its own mobile phone network.
Google recently announced its new software for phones, which is designed to allow phones to operate with any carrier and to create open phones that act more like computers. The company is preparing to bid on a large chunk of wireless spectrum, which could be used to provide mobile phone and Internet services.
Wall Street Journal reporter Kevin Delaney says with its own network, Google could help reshape the wireless world.
Amazon.com is unveiling its long-anticipated e-book device today.
The Kindle is about the size of a paperback, weighs 10 ounces, and sports a 6-inch screen. It's display attempts to match the clarity of a printed book. And it can connect to the Kindle e-book store wirelessly through the EVDO broadband service and Wi-Fi.
Almost 90,000 titles will be available, and you can also subscribe to several newspapers and magazines.
Guest: IDC analyst Richard Shim
Space exploration has long been an inspiration for geeks and technologists. But life in space can be quite unglamorous. Beyond Blastoff: Surviving in Space is the name of a new exhibit at the Chabot Space and Science Center in Oakland, California.
Staff astronomer Ben Burress walked me through the exhibit, which features real artifacts of the Russian and American space programs.
I Want Sandy is a new email-based automated reminder service that's just been opened for public use after a test period.
Guest: "I Want Sandy" creator Rael Dornfest
With the original Zune MP3 player, Microsoft has so far failed to mount a serious challenge to the iPod. Now comes the next generation Zune, which went on sale yesterday.
Is Zune 2 a serious challenger to Apple's dominance?
Guest: Dwight Silverman, Houston Chronicle
The United Nations World Food Program says the Web game FreeRice has generated enough rice to feed 50,000 hungry people around the world for one day.
Players are quizzed on English vocabulary. Each correct answer generates 10 grains of rice for the WFP. Correct answers trigger advertisement displays. The ad revenue goes to the U.N.
Social networking company Facebook recently unveiled a new advertising initiative that attaches to advertisements names and photos of your friends who've said elsewhere on the site that they like the products being promoted.
The initiative has already been criticized by privacy advocates who find it a little creepy, and now a University of Minnesota law professor says the scheme could be illegal as well. William McGeveran laid out his ideas in a blog past late last week. His concern is that users may have their identities appropriated for commercial use without their permission.
People who want to learn a new language have more resources available to them than ever before, thanks in part to audio and video podcasts.
iTunes lists more than 100 free language learning podcasts in its directory.
Guest: Jenise Rowekamp, University of Minnesota Language Center
Mango Languages offers free lessons Spanish, French, German, Italian, Russian, Greek, Brazilian Portugese, Japanese, and Mandarin Chinese.
There are 100 lessons with dozens of slides featuring text and audio of native speakers for each language. You can replay the slides any time, and roll your cursor over individual words until they become clear. Users get drilled in vocabulary and grammar of their chosen language.
Adam Howell, who works in a college bookstore in Michigan, has been learning Greek with Mango Languages to improve communication with his Greek-speaking wife and in-laws. He likes the site so far.
"Using the program is great because it's really repetitive and it reviews the previous lesson or and not just the previous lesson but a prior lesson you were supposed to havelearned at the beginning of each lesson so you're always constantly
reviewing," he said. "And just the interface of the thing is very user-friendly."
If Howell were to complete all 100 lessons, he would have a running start at becoming fluent, according to Mango Languages founder Jason Teshuba.
"I'm not saying necessarily that you'll be 100 percent fluent upon completion of the course," he said. "Rather, you'll be far more confident, you'll have a solid foundation in the language."
Some language experts think Mango Languages is not the best way to learn a new language. Future Tense asked Jenise Rowekamp, director of the University of Minnesota's Language Center, and seven of her language instructor colleagues at the U of M to check out the site. Rowekamp and her associates agree that the site relied on outdated language instruction methods.
"The consensus was somebody couldn't really learn a language this way, that maybe if you are going to do a little traveling you could pick up a few phrases or it might be a useful supplementary approach to a course you are be taking," she said. "But nobody felt this would be either very effective or even very fun."
Not fun, she says, because the site is too repetitive and ties you to a computer screen for too long. Even so, Rowekamp said Mango deserves praise for its user interface and use of Web technology.
"The sound is really clear, it loads fast, it's easy to repeat things," she said. "I kind of liked the use of rollovers -- you know, when you put your cursor over you might get some pronunciation help."
Rowekamp also likes the use of native speakers and the emphasis on high-frequency words, phrases and sentences that would be useful to travelers.
Wikipedia allows anyone to contribute to articles, but University of Minnesota researchers have found that a mere one-tenth of one percent of Wikipedia editors account for about half of what they call the "content value" of the online encyclopedia.
Associate professor of computer science and engineering Loren Terveen says researchers also found that a relatively small number of Wikipedia edits are damaging to articles, and that erroneous or malicious edits are fixed quickly.
Today, Julio Ojeda-Zapata reviews Nabbit, which he describes as
"...an ingenious new service for ... radio listeners who want to easily identify tunes for future reference.They do this by clicking presets on their data-ready phones when tunes they like are playing, and later retrieving the tagged songs online, with all the details attached.
Researchers at U.C. Berkeley say they've produced the world's smallest radio. It's 10,000 times thinner than a strand of hair.
Researchers at McGill University in Montreal have developed the MindHabits Trainer game, in which one exercise shows a grid of faces, with 15 of them frowning and one smiling. The player must find the smiling face as quickly as possible.
In a new study, players reported feeling less stressed, had higher self esteem, and were more confident. The level of the players' stress hormone, cortisol, fell by 17 percent.
The idea is that through repetitive playing, the mind is trained to focus on the positive aspects of life, according to McGill's Mark Baldwin.
