Compiled by Kevin Smith
Andrea Electronics Adds New Service
Andrea Electronics Corporation announced this week a new addition to its current selection of digital speech-enhancing audio processing technologies. The company's ExactVoice is an adaptive, digital audio software process that utilizes blind source separation principles to extract a voice signal from background noise, enabling the high performance of speech-enabled applications. The new technology, which enhances the performance of certain speech applications, is available on real-time digital signal processor (DSP) platforms and will be available on a software PC platform in the near future. The new system is designed in particular for cellular telephones, and complements Andrea Electronics' Digital Super Directional Array (DSDA(R)) 2.0 and PureAudio(TM) 2.0 enhancement algorithms.
Cache Attack Could Reveal People's Online Tracks
A company wanting to keep closer tabs on what kind of sites its employees are visiting while on the clock may have a new ally in fighting the battle. A technique that exploits the way Web browsers store recently viewed data could enable outsiders to check what sites a person has visited recently. The exploit--called a "timing attack"--enables employers to check whether the surfer has recently viewed any sites from a predetermined list. An employer could use the technique on internal websites to see whether any employees have been visiting the competition's job listings. A Web portal could check whether a person has recently visited any of its sponsors. Because Java and JavaScript are not necessary, and switching off caching leads to unacceptable performance degradation, "there seems to be little hope that effective countermeasures will be developed and deployed any time soon," Felten and Schneider wrote.
Google Product Tracker Could Raise Privacy Concerns
If there wasn't enough to worry about on the Internet today, Google's new toolbar extension has raised privacy concerns regarding the way it works. One version of the new toolbar keeps track of every site a users visits to analyze search and surfing patterns. Google goes out of its way to inform people that the toolbar will track where they surf, earning it plaudits from at least one privacy advocate who suggested that the company had cleared crucial hurdles by disclosing its intentions and making the results anonymous. Google acknowledges that the toolbar creates unique files and says people should trust that the company will maintain its policy of keeping those files anonymous.
Digital Household World 2001 Coming to London
Internet and wireless technologies are on the threshold of fully enabling the "digital household"--a world where all appliances, consumer goods, consumer electronics, communications terminals and computing devices are wired, wireless and interconnected. Digital Household Word, Europe's biggest broadband home convention, is the only gateway to this world of interconnected smart devices and even smarter consumers. The event will be the first exhibition and conference to address all aspects of digital technology as it relates to the household. The convergence of many formerly discrete technologies and platforms is driving the advent of smart home appliances and their interconnectivity.
OpenTV Launches New Internet-to-Cable Technology
OpenTV, the world's leading interactive television and media solutions company, announced the launch of OpenTV Publisher, a technology which facilitates rapid delivery of Internet content to cable and satellite television viewers worldwide. OpenTV Publisher debuted with the recent launch of BSkyB's digital Sky Text offering to its four million digital homes. British Sky Broadcasting, the UK's leading digital broadcaster, this week announced that it was extending its array of television-based e-commerce and online applications with the launch of digital text featuring on-screen interactive betting. BSkyB is authoring a dedicated service to provide digital text which, in comparison to analogue text, is media rich, has faster navigation and is distributed via digital transmission. BskyB passes the content in XML through the OpenTV Publisher platform, which translates the content for television.
Sun Microsystems Looking to Merge Java and File-Swapping Technologies
Hoping to catch the Net's latest technology trend, Sun Microsystems is quietly creating a team of engineers with hopes of merging Java and the file-swapping technology that brought Napster to the music-loving masses. The company says it has no specific project or product in mind yet. But, a spokeswoman confirmed that Sun is building a team that to explore peer-to-peer technology development, in part as a way to help boost sales of the company's Java software and industrial-strength network server systems. Peer-to-peer software has captured the spotlight as a way for people with desktop computers to trade music or video files through services such as Napster or Gnutella. But, developers say the applications could be far more widespread, as the model is applied more broadly. Programmers say that the power of peer-to-peer models is that any computers connected to a network can share resources, bandwidth and processing power, whether they are home PCs or industrial-strength servers.