TREETOPS OF TECHNOLOGY

Let's skip across the treetops of technology this week. 

Thanks to a Navy TTP reader who notified Bill Gregory who then notified me of a new technology via Google. Its called Goolgle-411, simply enough and it is pretty slick.

You pick up your cell phone and dial 800-Goog411 (466-4411) and you speak your location into the phone. Next tell the phone what you are looking for and voila, the business, restaurant, or site of interest is served up to you promptly free of charge.

You can visit this site to learn more about it and watch the video from Mountain View California:

http://www.google.com/goog411/

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Some new digital cameras are showing up with an interesting addition to their already amazing qualities. Facial recognition software is being included with a number of models.

This is an interesting addition to an already bevy of capabilities and raises some questions as to its intended use. Think of the some of the possibilities, such as your camera may now be subpoenaed for a pic of someone who might be on a list of bad guys somewhere:

http://www.digitalcamerainfo.com/content/Canon-Takes-Face-Recognition-in-Consumer-Cameras-A-Step-Further-.htm

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Our late friend Dennis Turner wrote an interesting article on VOIP (Voice Over Internet Protocol) a while ago. He examined the technology that was available and meticulously documented its many possibilities and choices at the time. I would encourage you to read the article that Dennis wrote as it contains a wealth of information. It can be found below.

Talk Is Cheap

This technology has matured somewhat since Dennis wrote about this subject. Mainly on the variety of vendors offering various low cost plans while the software has evolved slightly. There are still many choices from Skype to Vonage. You can connect from your laptop or desktop with a broadband connection.  Or you can utilize your existing house phone for a VOIP service.  The FCC has an excellent site for a description and I would encourage you to visit it if you're interested.

http://www.fcc.gov/voip/

Here are some additional links to learn or shop for VOIP

http://www.voip.com/

http://www.skype.com/

http://www.voipreview.org/

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Next on the queue is Google's Picassa. It has been updated with API's ((Application Programming Interface)for programmers to roll their own versions of the interface into applications, Word documents, email etc. Picassa is Google's free photo application that can be downloaded from:

http://picasa.google.com/download/

and the Web Button here  

http://code.google.com/apis/picasa/docs/web_uploader.html

The quality of this freely available application just keeps getting better and better. With the advent of digital technology all of us can potentially acquire vast amounts of images and cataloguing them can be a chore. Google and others now makes this quite easy.

Microsoft does this with their multimedia version of Office, and Apple provides this with iPhoto. Of course we are not competing with the commercial packages available like Adobe's Photoshop or Apple's Aperture, but for free, the applications are more than adequate – Picassa especially.

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A trio of tidbits.

Researchers at the University of Rochester NY have discovered a way to compress music files 1000 times smaller than MP3s. It isn't perfect yet but will be when they fine tune their algorithms. Read all about it here:

Researchers Compress Music Files 1000 Times Smaller Than MP3s

And…

PGP Corp has added encryption to Windows-based smart phones. This provides a very strong layer of security for your mobile data on these phones. You can read the full article here:

PGP adds Encryption to Win based smart phones

Speaking of smart phones, if you believe that more of your life belongs to telecoms, then this news is for you. Sony is to offer full sized movies to ATT phone subscribers.

You can read about it here:

Sony to offer Movies on ATT phones

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Lastly, while we're in the treetops, we might as well look up to the sky, to the Google Sky in fact.  You can locate and zoom in on 200 billion stars, galaxies, and celestial objects via the breathtakingly beautiful astronomical photography of the Hubble Space Telescope.

It's hard not to be transfixed with wonder and awe at our glorious Universe.  Enjoy!

Marco