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Privacy advocates cringed when they learned people were being caught unawares by the cameras of Google Street View. That service lets users of Google Maps see photographs of streetscapes - including people milling bout in front of houses and shops. In response to criticism Google has begun blurring the faces of people on Street View, but that gives the service a strange appearance.

Some researchers at Columbia University believe they have a better way to protect the privacy of people unknowingly photographed by the likes of Google.

Neeraj Kumar and Columbia colleagues have developed software that automatically gives people new faces. The software selects from an image bank of faces, picking the best replacement, then creates a composite face.

Image courtesy of Columbia University

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The Vista operating system has a bad reputation -- and Microsoft is setting out to repair it. Problem is, the effort might be too late, according to today's guest, CNET News.com's Ina Fried.

Microsoft yesterday unveiled the Mojave Experiment. People were shown an upcoming operating system called Mojave, only to learn later it was really the much-maligned Vista. The subjects in the experiment -- predictably perhaps -- raved about the OS and were quite surprised to learn it was Vista, which many people view as buggy and incapable of working with a lot of hardware.

The following is an edited transcript of my interview with Fried:

FRIED: There's nothing wrong with it (Mojave experiment) per se. There are some limitations. Here they're shown Vista and given a chance to use it in a controlled setting. That's not the same as trying to install it on your existing computer, trying to upgrade software, the kinds of things people have to do every day. So think it's a valid experience but it's a limited experience.

GORDON: Doesn't the experiment point to a Vista weakness, that it requires a professional demo to get people to understand and like it?

FRIED: One of the challenges of Vista is it changes a bunch of things. Add some of those changes are perceived as positive in the ether but are not perceived as positive when people are using them, doing the things they do every day. So if you look at Vista and it's sort of a concept, no something you're using, it looks very good. But then when you actually have to use it things have moved, things have changed, and a lot of the things under the hood have changed. So I think there is a difference between the way it looks, the way it feels and the way it works.

GORDON: Why does Microsoft feel the need to defend Vista NOW? It's had a bad rep for a long time.

FRIED: For a long time now the loudest voice on Vista has actually been Apple with its anti-Vista campaign -- making fun of it, making it sound very hard to use. And I think in addition to what was a very lukewarm reception this has fueled the fire of the negative perceptions of Vista. Not to minimize the actual legitimate beefs about Vista from people who have used it. But all of this has added up to a negative perception in the market of Vista. And I think Microsoft has finally, albeit belatedly, come to the conclusion that's not a good thing for its core product, even if everyone who gets a new PC gets Vista and so sales are good. The idea that your core franchise isn't perceived well isn't good for Microsoft.

GORDON: What are the chances this campaign can turn things around for Vista?

FRIED: It is awfully late in the cycle to change perceptions. Vista has been on the market for well over a year. It's tough at this point to get people to give a new look. The old adage that you never get a second chance to make a first impression, I think, is really true here.

Microsoft demonstrates its Surface Sphere computing concept:

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It's sort of a leftover day here on Future Tense. In April we aired part of an interview with Daniel Wilson, a robotics scientist who writes for Popular Mechanics. Three months later, we feature part two. The topic: genius inventions worth waiting for.

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Today we feature part two of our conversation with New York private investigator Steven Rambam. The following is an edited transcript of our interview.

RAMBAM: Look, a cell phone is basically a little informant sitting in your pocket. To begin with that cell phone can tell me who all your friends are, who you do business with, who you consider an important person in your life. I mean if you are calling Cynthia an hour every night before you go to sleep, I know that if I'm investigating you Cynthia is definitely someone I want to talk with. But these days, a cell phone tells me what products you are interested in when you use it to scan a bar code. I tells me physically were you are every moment of your life. It gives me your physical location from GPS tracking and through cell tower triangulation. If you are carrying one of the new 3G phones I know where you are to within 10 to 100 feet every moment of your life. Let's say you're sitting in a restaurant. I know who's in that restaurant with you. You go to a meeting? I know who's in that meeting with you. And the technology is going to get better and better.

GORDON: How do you get access to my cell phone records and location?

RAMBAM: Well as a private investigator I don't get access to who you call unless I subpoena your records. But let me tell you there are bad guys out there who do take advantage of the ability to surreptitiously and illegally get a hold of your cell phone bills. As far as all the other technologies, you give that up. It's estimated that 45 percent of all the people who use the iPhone turn on the location awareness, meaning it broadcasts where it is. They make their location publicly known. And five years from know this conversation you and I are having will be considered quaint.

GORDON: Why?

RAMBAM: Because people won't care. Because it will be considered the norm. And also because in a lot of situations people will insist you turn it on. If I'm an employer and I want to track that you're really on the job site I'll tell you "Listen Jon, you've got to turn on your location awareness on your intelligent cell phone and you've got to turn on some other location broadcasting device so I know that you are really out interviewing the senator." If I'm a nervous wife and you're working late in the office and your cell phone locator beacon suddenly goes dark for three hours, when you come home there might be a divorce lawyer waiting for you on the steps.

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Privacy is an antiquated notion, acording to Steven Rambam, a New York private investigator.

At the H.O.P.E. hackers convention last week Rambam talked about he uses the Internet to investigate cold case homicides, missing people and financial fraud. Private databases, e-mail, the Web and social networks have made it a breeze to profile people, said Rambam. The following is an edited transcript of my conversation with Rambam.

RAMBAM: It is now possible, just sitting at your computer, to determine someone's address, telephone number, employment, business activity, criminal history, litigation history. But also, it's now possible to determine someone's character: their likes, dislikes, hobbies, habits, personal family history, religion, sexual orientation, politics.

GORDON: How do you determine someone's character from the Internet?

RAMBAM: More and more these days the information we use is self-contributed by the subject or witness. Any investigator that doesn't use MySpace, Classmates, Facebook and all of the other Web 2.0 sites and blogs is just simply not being an efficient or competent investigator.

GORDON: So many people are just opting out of the notion of privacy?

RAMBAM: I give a talk called "Privacy is Dead, Get Over It." These days the more accurate title would be "Privacy Committed Suicide, Get Over It." People don't have the same concept of what's private information and what's public anymore.

GORDON: You're probably delighted by that?

RAMBAM: My attitude is, thank you very much. Absolutely.

GORDON: If you were going to do a quick on background me, what could you find? You already have my name, phone number, and you know where I work.

RAMBAM: Doing a background investigation on someone is like pulling a string. As long as you have the end of that string you can start pulling it and extrapolate from any one piece of information and develop an entire dossier. Now I've got your cell phone number. From that I can immediately develop your name and address. From that it will take me less than 30 minutes to get your date of birth and Social Security number. I trace your SSN to every address you've ever lived at in your adult history. I can get employment, businesses, criminal record. I can go from there to determine your likes, your dislikes, your character, your religion, your sexual orientation, what you like to read, and what music you like to listen to.

In part two of my interview with Rambam, we'll discuss why a mobile phone is "a little informant in your pocket." Part two airs Friday, June 25.

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John Halecky of Summit, New Jersey loves his new Sony HD Radio. It's easy on the ears.

"The sound quality is such on those clear channels where it's really not comparable to the old way of listening, and I've used some pretty expensive tuners in the past," he said. For a $100 price point with this new Sony radio, there are stations coming in clearer than they ever have before."

The sound quality is better because Halecky's radio picks up stations broadcasting digitally, and there are more of those all the time. Problem is, there aren't enough John Halecky's of the world just yet.

Digital radio, or HD radio, makes AM sound like FM, and FM like CDs. And there's enough bandwidth to allow broadcasters to make new stations on side channels.

Whereas satellite radio is a national, fee-based service, HD Radio is local and free. But consumers have to buy new radios to hear them. Some radios have dropped to about $100, but still HD radio adoption is slower than manufacturers and broadcasters would like. They've been around for four years, but sales and consumer awareness is lagging. Edison Media Research says only about one quarter of Americans have even heard of HD radio.

The medium has two problems, according to Edison's Tom Webster: Broadcasters aren't creating enough new programming, and consumers have to buy new stand-alone radios.

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Millions of new voters are expected to go to the polls come November. At the same time, many states are rolling out new voting technologies, or reverting to machines they used in the past, as touch screen voting slowly falls out of favor.

What will be the result? I put that question to Doug Chapin, director of Electionline. The following is an edited transcript of my interview.

CHAPIN: The 2000 presidential election came down basically to disputes over paper punch-card ballots. As a result there was this almost revulsion about paper-based ballots and specifically punch-card ballots. And so the federal government and the community rushed enthusiastically into what they thought was the next big thing in voting technology. And that was these touch-screen machines. Over time that enthusiasm for electronic voting was accompanied by growing concern about electronic voting and that created political controversies and some uncomfortable moments for state and local election officials with the result that some of them at least that whatever benefit there might be with touch-screen voting, we're feeling more comfortable with the tried and true paper-based ballots, which are the new breed of optical scan.

GORDON: That being said, there are still plenty of problems with optical scan and paper ballots, right?

CHAPIN: Absolutely. Every voting technology, whether it's paper ballots, optical screen ballots, touch-screen ballots -- shoot, marbles in a jar -- I mean every type of voting technologies has both advantages and disadvantages. In some ways I think election officials have to pick their poison when it comes to voting technology.

GORDON: How much change is going on right now across the country with the way that we vote?

CHAPIN: Once again the poster child for change in voting in this country is Florida. In 2000 many jurisdictions in Florida we using punch-card voting machines. Because of that Florida was one of the first states to adopt the new touch-screen voting machines in many jurisdictions across the state. By 2008 Florida will have gotten out of the business of touch-screen voting and will be entirely optical scan. So that's three separate presidential elections and three separate voting systems, and we're seeing that in many other jurisdictions across the country.

GORDON: What major problems should we look out for this November?

CHAPIN: Whenever you see problems with voting technology it's not the kind that most people worry about -- machines stealing votes or breakdowns and the like. It's more unfamiliarity with the new technology on the part of voters, poll workers, election officials. Change breeds uncertainty and uncertainty is fertile ground for error. In those places which are making big changes in their technology close to election day you have a greater risk if not a greater probability of problems at the polls.

While waiting for a bus on St. Paul's Grand Avenue today I found myself wishing I could turn to my smartphone to find the location of my bus. Waiting is more frustrating when you don't know how long you have to wait. Aboard the bus, I sent one of those "wouldn't it be great if ..." messages on Twitter and learned in short order that several agencies around indeed using GPS and other technologies to to allow bus-tracking by riders.

It's happening to various degrees in Portland and New York, San Francisco and Helsinki (podcast), and a bunch of other cities (including my own town of Alameda, CA) via NextBus.

The fact that I didn't know I could track the buses that run on my own street suggests transit agencies need to do a better job marketing these features.

Ah, the things I learn from my friends on Twitter...

UPDATE: Metro Transit in the Twin Cities is now employing GPS technology to allow customers to track bus departure times. More later.

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Facebook this week said it fixed a security hole that exposed the birth dates of members during a public test of a new design. Normally Facebook users choose whether to keep their birthdays private from other users.

Security researcher Graham Cluley, who discovered the privacy breach, says it's good policy to never give out your date of birth to a Web site if you can help it.

UPDATE: Facebook did not directly respond to Cluley's recommendation that users provide false dates of birth. Instead it sent, after my radio deadline, the same statement it provided to every other newsie:

"For a brief period of time, a small number of users were able to access a private beta of Facebook's new site design meant only for developers. During that time, some of those users had their birthdays revealed due to a bug. The problem was identified and promptly resolved."

From Open Culture:

In Radiohead's new video for "House of Cards", no cameras or lights were used. Instead "3D plotting technologies collected information about the shapes and relative distances of objects." And the video was made entirely with visualizations of that data.

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Syuzi Pakhchyan is the guest on Future Tense. She's author of the new book Fashioning Technology: A DIY Intro to Smart Crafting.

UPDATE: Keith Braafladt from the Science Museum of Minnesota writes,

"We've been working a bit with Leah Buechley who's done a lot of work with craft technologies and is now at the MIT Media Lab.

We just happen to be running a class next week called Smarty Pants for 13-16 year-olds. We'll be using the Lilly-pad, a programmable sewing machine and design software

Here's the description:

Smarty Pants
Import your own freehand illustrations into computer software, then digitally sew your creation onto belts, bags, or t-shirts. Add a circuit using conductive thread and some LEDs to create your own blinking fashions.

Kristen Murray (director of Learning Technologies Center at the Science Museum) will be leading the class."

Thanks, Keith!

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How nasty is the 'Net? You'll get an answer in no time at all if you roam the Web with an unpatched Windows XP machine that's not protected by a software or hardware firewall.

An experiment conducted by the SANS Internet Storm Center finds that, on average, such a computer gets infected by malware within four minutes.

"That is not much time at all and the window has shrunk over the past couple of years," said Lorna Hutcheson with the ISC.

Why is the situation so bad?

"The battle, in my experience, is waged between the admins and management who want to get this system up and working and security who is saying not until its been patched and its security posture confirmed," said Hutcheson.

Here's the ISC's Survival Time graph:

A Los Angeles television news "reporter" gets the business from a man standing in line to buy a 3G iPhone. There are legitimate questions to be asked about the extent of devotion to Apple, but this morning news clown goes way over the line into stupid-land.

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Sometimes a guy just wants to have fun. How could I resist doing a Future Tense segment in which I and my guest get to say "ChunkyLover53@aol.com" over and over again?

Chris Boyd, who heads malware research at security company FaceTime, tells Future Tense listeners today about an exploit that uses an email address given out by Homer Simpson in a 2003 episode to ensnare unsuspecting Simpsons fans into an evil botnet.

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This piece in Computerworld by contributor John Brandon was the impetus for today's show.

Brandon's article on the far-flung projects of Google begins thusly:

With a skyrocketing stock price, fanboy hysteria and -- most importantly -- really useful products, Google is the prima donna of tech for the new millennium.

The company is so active that it's hard to keep track of everything it does. And, just when you get a good handle on its litany of Web applications, promising lab innovations and unheralded research projects, it seems to turn on a dime -- a difficult move for a US$167 billion company with 19,000 employees -- and invent something new. Who would have thought a search site company would get involved in laying a fiber-optic undersea cable between the US and Japan?

Here's a little slide show I prepared from outside the Apple Store in Roseville, MN this morning. It features an audio interview with Taylor Carrigan, a 16 year-old from Woodbury who was fourth in line for the new 3G iPhone.

Meanwhile, I'll be on MPR's All Things Considered with Tom Crann tonight, talking about the all the iPhone activation troubles that ensued. Meanwhile, Julio Ojeda-Zapata has a good roundup of today's "iApocalypse" as Gizmodo called it.

John Hill of Hugo, MN and Eric Swanson of White Bear Lake, MN arrived at the Apple Store in Roseville, MN at 2:00 am today. They camped outside the Rosedale Mall until 5 :00 when the doors opened up. As I write this, about 150 people fanatics are in the queue.

A tiny section of the long queue.

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Today on Future Tense we present part two of our conversation with David Rice, author of Geekonomics: The Real Cost of Insecure Software. Watch this space for a transcript later. I know you want it, like, now, but I'm off to an an Apple store to watch the sheep to the slaughter. There's a new iPhone doncha know. Speaking of which, don't forget to send me some joyous photos of you with your new iPhone.

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Is software inherently buggy and insecure, or is it imperfect because software companies have little incentive to make it less vulnerable? That's one of the central questions discussed on today's show.

The following is a lightly edited transcript of my interview with David Rice, author of Geekonomics: The Real Cost of Insecure Software.

RICE: The real cost of insecure software isn't so much the financial outlay, although it's significant. It's everything we can't do because of it. And so the real cost isn't necessarily what you pay, it's what you give up in order to get it. From an economic perspective it is disastrous because you're spending to say in place. And when we look at how software cuts across so many different aspects of civilization, the expenditures we put out in order to protect software from exploitation is massive. That means there's lots of things we can't do.

GORDON: So when I'm in a paranoid state of mind I get to thinking the security industry has sort of a vested interest in unsafe software and perpetuating the problem. Is that a crazy thought?

RICE: I don't think it's necessarily overly-paranoid. It's maybe the pragmatist view. Security vendors don't sell security. They sell products. And it's their hope, as well as it's your hope, that those products will actually do something to hinder the attacks. And to a degree they have -- we can say well, without firewalls, without antivirus, where would we be? That argument has some merit but when we look at the overall trend, 2006 was deemed the year of cybercrime. This is after at least a decade of massive expenditures in terms of buying new firewalls, better and greater intrusion protection systems, and better and greater and more pervasive antivirus. And we still have these problems, and in fact these problems have only gotten worse. Vendors will sell you the things they think will sell very will and they think will do a certain amount of good. Every year there is a new suite or products that come out. Why? Basically the vendors are trying to make their quarterly numbers. Whether or not it actually protects you remains to be seen.

GORDON: On the other hand I do wonder whether the problem of software security is so vexing that ultimately it's not completely fixable. We would like to make hurricanes go away, but we can't.

RICE: With software, we're not dealing with mother nature. We're doing it to ourselves. We create the software. We don't necessarily have to throw massive amounts of technology at the software issue to try to correct it. We do need to look at the incentives of the software manufacturers. They're not trying to make a product that hurts us,but in fact they are. They don't have a strong enough incentive to make a better product that can avoid what are really highly foreseeable activities on the part of malicious entities out on the Internet.

(Rice favors a tax on buggy software. We'll ask him why on the next Future Tense.)

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It's iPhone day here on Future Tense. We talk with CNET News.com's Tom Krazit about the most significant new features of the highly anticipated second generation gadget, as well as it's continued shortcomings (Still no cutting and pasting of text? What's the deal?) And we discuss who should submit to Apple by purchasing the thing. Luckily Future Tense doesn't have to make that decision: It still has 13 months left to go on its T-Mobile Blackberry contract.

By the way, the trinity of top tech reviewers have now published reviews of the new iPhone. Ed Baig writes, "It's cheaper, faster and a lot friendlier for business ... With GPS newly added to the mix, this handheld marvel has no equal among consumer-oriented smartphones."

David Pogue thinks it's a nice upgrade, but says it's far from perfect: "Unfortunately, most of the standard cellphone features that were missing from the first iPhone are still missing. There's still no voice dialing, video recording, copy-and-paste, memory-card slot, Bluetooth stereo audio or phone-to-phone photo sending (MMS). And when the battery needs replacement after a couple of years, you'll still have to pay Apple $86 for a replacement."

Furthermore, Walt Mossberg complains about the cost: "Apple's exclusive carrier in the U.S., AT&T Inc., has effectively negated the iPhone's up-front price cut by jacking up its monthly fee for unlimited data use by $10."

We'd like to publish your new iPhone-related photos. Send them to us.

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Like Tiger Woods at the U.S. Open, Twitter is playing on a bum leg.

For weeks now the service has creaked under the weight of more users and traffic -- it's had to shut down key features and sometimes goes offline altogether as is struggles to build a more stable system.

Newer services, such as FriendFeed, Identi.ca and Plurk, have managed to peel away some users. Dwight Silverman, an active Twitter user, believes the exodus is not significant.

The following is a lightly edited radio interview with Silverman.

SILVERMAN: For most people, Twitter is where their communities are. It's where the most interesting conversations are happening. And so people are sticking with it because it serves that social need.

GORDON: But it seems like every week there's, like, the new Twitter. People are definitely sampling alternatives.

SILVERMAN: People go off and try them but they just don't have Twitter's mix of usability, simplicity and community.

GORDON: While Twitter is growing rapidly, it's certainly no Facebook yet. Will Twitter's technical problems prevent it from ever truly hitting the mainstream?

SILVERMAN: I think Twitter eventually will fix its problems. They're certainly working hard on it and they've gotten a large infusion of venture capital to try to make that happen. But I think it's going to take time, and I think they loyalty of the community will keep it together so that when it is fixed, a lot of people won't have fled.

GORDON: So you're a big Twitter guy. You update more frequently than I do and have quite a few more followers. Why do you like it so much?

SILVERMAN: I don't necessarily think that everybody should try Twitter. There are certain types of people who should try it. If you have a community of people around you who are using it, certainly you should get into it in order to maintain conversation with them. A lot of of the people I interact with are here in Houston. I've actually made additional friends in the real world that I have met on Twitter. If you're interested in technology and are interested in learning what some of the big thinkers of technology are doing, a lot of them are on Twitter. There is a growing community of entertainers on Twitter. You know John Hodgeman, who's on The Daily Show and plays the PC guy in the Mac vs. PC commercials? He's a regular on Twitter. The woman who wrote the screenplay for Juno is a regular on Twitter. So depending on what your needs are Twitter can be a lot of fun, it can be very useful, and you can learn a lot.

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Would you be embarrassed if strangers knew what video clips you watch on YouTube? Could those viewing habits come back to bite you in some way? A judge's order last week has many people thinking about such questions.

As part of $1 billion copyright infringement lawsuit, the judge ordered YouTube owner Google to turn over user data to Viacom, which is seeking evidence that YouTube is illegally showing Viacom-owned programs. The data include usernames of YouTube viewers, what videos they watched, and users' unique computer addresses.

Privacy watchdogs at the Electronic Frontier Foundation say the judge's ruling violates a 1988 law that was passed after Supreme Court nominee Robert Bork's video rental habits were revealed.

The following is a lightly-edited interview with EFF attorney Kurt Opsahl:

GORDON: Why does it matter that one more big corporation will now hold data on YouTube users?

OPSAHL: People have, by signing up for YouTube, they've agreed that YouTube will be able to get this information and by necessity, in order to view the videos, they have to tell YouTube and Google what videos they want to view. But that information is still protecte and private information that should not be disclosed outside of the protections of the Video Privacy Protection Act.

GORDON: I watch YouTube videos and don't particularly care if people know what I watch. So what's the harm that can be done if this information is exposed?

OPSAHL: Well that is your choice but under the Video Privacy Protection Act each consumer is entitled to notice that that information will be disclosed and given an opportunity to contest disclosure. So you may choose not to contest disclosure if it doesn't matter to you. But for those people who are concerned about this information and do consider it to be private, they have that opportunity to contest disclosure.

FT: Right but what negative real world effects are we talking about here? Are you saying, for example, that people could suffer employment discrimination or something like that based on their YouTube viewing habits?

OPSAHL: The problem is that this order ignores the protections of the Federal Video Privacy Protection Act and will expose, potentially, some deeply private information about what videos are watched by the YouTube users.

FT: So how should Viacom treat this data?

OPSAHL: They key thing is to remove the personally-identifiable information such that that information is not disclosed. Alternatively, to comply with the Video Privacy Protection Act, provide notice to the users and give them an opportunity to contest the disclosure.

FT: What larger issues does this ruling point out?

OPSAHL: It illustrates that Internet companies are compiling vast repositories of information about ordinary Americans, which becomes a bit of a honey pot that people make seek. If Google had not kept all of this information we wouldn't have to worry about them disclosing it.

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Up to 12,000 laptops go missing at U.S. airports every week, according to a new report from the Ponemon Institute.

What's unclear from the study is how many of those computers get reunited with their owners.

The research firm's founder, Larry Ponemon, admits the number of lost or stolen laptops sounds incredible, but insists its true.

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Last month the Associated Press created an Internet tempest when it demanded a Web site take down headlines and short excerpts of AP stories for which the site had not paid. The AP claimed the excerpting was a theft of its intellectual property, but the prevailing feeling in the blogosphere was that the AP just didn't get it -- that it should be grateful for the web links to its content.

Media critic Jeff Jarvis says the AP incident signifies the struggle between the old and new media economies.

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As the New York Times reported last week, Intel does not plan to upgrade its corporate computers to Windows Vista, the beleaguered operating system from Microsoft.

Even though many analysts and online commentators see Intel's move as an embarrassment for Microsoft, Windows expert Ed Bott says it's no big deal.