Google Offers "Latitude" To Track People

Google is releasing free software Wednesday that enables people to keep track of each other using their cell phones. CNET got a sneak peek at it, and CNET-TV Senior Editor and Early Show contributor Natali Del Conte explained how it works on the show Tuesday. She says "Latitude" uses GPS systems and what's called cell tower triangulation to do the job. The software seeks the closest three cell towers and, with GPS, combines the data to show where someone is. It is designed to work on any phone with Internet capabilities, except the iPhone. "Latitude" is being marketed as a tool that could help parents keep tabs on their children's locations, but it can be used for anyone to find anyone else, assuming permission is given. "What Google Latitude does is allow you to share that location with friends and family members, and likewise be able to see friends and family members' locations," Steve Lee, product manager for Google Latitude, told CNET. "For example, a girlfriend could use it to see if her boyfriend has arrived at a restaurant and, if not, how far away he is."

Source: http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/02/04/earlyshow/leisure/gamesgadgetsgizmos/main4774320.shtml?tag=topHome;topStories

Passport RFIDs cloned wholesale by $250 eBay auction spree

Using inexpensive off-the-shelf components, an information security expert has built a mobile platform that can clone large numbers of the unique electronic identifiers used in US passport cards and next generation drivers licenses. The $250 proof-of-concept device - which researcher Chris Paget built in his spare time - operates out of his vehicle and contains everything needed to sniff and then clone RFID, or radio frequency identification, tags. During a recent 20-minute drive in downtown San Francisco, it successfully copied the RFID tags of two passport cards without the knowledge of their owners. Paget's contraption builds off the work of researchers at RSA and the University of Washington, which last year found weaknesses in US passport cards and so-called EDLs, or enhanced drivers' licenses. Paget's device consists of a Symbol XR400 RFID reader (now manufactured by Motorola), a Motorola AN400 patch antenna mounted to the side of his Volvo XC90, and a Dell 710m that's connected to the RFID reader by ethernet cable. The laptop runs a Windows application Paget developed that continuously prompts the RFID reader to look for tags and logs the serial number each time one is detected. He bought most of the gear via auctions listed on eBay.

Source: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/02/02/low_cost_rfid_cloner/

Google Earth drops into the oceans

For the past three years, Google Earth has given its hundreds of millions of users a way to explore, tag and discover the surface of our planet. Well, the land parts at least. Today, Google completes the picture of the world by adding into its popular software the oceans, which cover more than 70% of the Earth's surface. Ocean in Google Earth will let users dive below the surface of the water to examine wildlife, mountains and shipwrecks in this murky world. To help users understand what they are looking at, Google has assembled a coalition of more than 80 organisations, including the National Geographic Society, BBC and the Marine Conservation Society, to provide images, video and analysis in regularly-updated "layers" of information added to Google's basic mapping technology. Users will be able to track the movements of animals in the sea, view marine protected areas and even keep up to date on which fish species are good choices if you want to eat sustainably in a particular region of the world. "With this latest version of Google Earth, you can not only zoom into whatever part of our planet's surface you wish to examine in closer detail, you can now dive into the world's oceans that cover almost three quarters of the planet and discover new wonders that had not been accessible in previous versions of this magical experience," said the former American vice-president, Al Gore, at the launch of the new version of Google Earth in San Fransisco.

Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/feb/02/google-earth-oceans

Solved: the mystery of why locusts swarm

They first became famous in the Book of Exodus as the eighth of the 10 plagues of Egypt, but it has taken another few thousand years – and the skills of modern scientists – to work out why desert locusts suddenly swarm in vast numbers. A study by the universities of Oxford, Cambridge and Sydney has found a build-up of serotonin in the nerves of the middle part of the locust's body controlling its legs and wings causes, within the space of a couple of hours, the solitary locust to turn into its swarming alter-ego. The finding opens the possibility of stopping the process long before it happens, by blocking the action of serotonin. This could be used to prevent the massive destruction of crops that occurs when locusts swarm – a threat affecting the livelihoods of one-tenth of the world's population. Globally there are about a dozen species of swarm-forming locust in a belt covering some 20 per cent of the world's landmass, from north Africa to China. Swidbert Ott, a member of the Cambridge team, said: "Serotonin profoundly influences how humans behave and interact, so to find the same chemical causes a normally shy insect to form huge groups is amazing."

Source: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/solved-the-mystery-of-why-locusts-swarm-1520409.html

Google: 'Human error' brings internet chaos for millions

The search engine incorrectly labelled all other websites as potentially harmful and stopped internet users from directly clicking through to their search results. The problem arose at around 2.30pm GMT today and was only fixed after 40 minutes – by which time millions of users had been affected. The company later announced that the fault had been caused by "human error" when an internal list of harmful sites was updated. A single forward slash (/) was put on the list in place of a full web address, effectively blacklisting every website because all web addresses contain the character. The ensuing chaos prompted panic among web surfers who feared the popular search engine had suffered some kind of major failure that could have had serious implications for internet commerce.

During the incident, which took place on Saturday afternoon, search results erroneously identified all other websites – and some of Google's own pages – as containing malicious software or 'malware', and created a warning: 'This site may harm your computer'. Marissa Mayer, VP, Search Products & User Experience, later updated the company's blog to apologise for the blunder. She posted: "This was clearly an error, and we are very sorry for the inconvenience caused to our users. What happened? Very simply, human error." She explained that malware warnings were based on a list of potentially harmful sites maintained with the help of a non-profit internet organisation called StopBadware.org. "StopBadware carefully researches each consumer complaint to decide fairly whether that URL belongs on the list," she said. "Since each case needs to be individually researched, this list is maintained by humans, not algorithms. "We periodically receive updates to that list and received one such update to release on the site this morning. Unfortunately (and here's the human error), the URL of '/' was mistakenly checked in as a value to the file and '/' expands to all URLs."

Source: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/scienceandtechnology/technology/google/4414452/Google-Human-error-brings-internet-chaos-for-millions.html