Surf Wonders

Let’s face it for many being on the computer is hassle-full. Being on the computer isn’t fun and productive any more.

Whether your home or business computers are online or offline over time they seem to slow down and many times crash. Being on the computer isn’t fun and productive any more. What is it that
causes these problems?

It’s my experience that the average individual knows a lot about his/her chosen field and very little about computer repair services and protecting information stored on a home or business computer.

Most of us are looking for a simple easy way to work or play on our computer. Unfortunately, computers have become complicated, necessary tools. Yet, it seems, several months after purchasing a computer it begins to bog down and run slower. You might experience mysterious freeze ups and crashes. Once this problem turns into a nuisance, generally, the computer is taken into a computer repair service shop where it will be out of commission for a week or so and a few hundred dollars spent to clean it up.

Most people don’t understand the relationship between a slow running computer and cyber-crime. Yet, the relationship is huge. There is a huge need to develop safe computer practices and rely on an emerging computer industry called “Personal Computer Services.”

One of the ways I like to describe computer safe practices is by comparing it to safe dental practices. We are encouraged to develop an everyday practice of flossing and cleaning teeth, right? We do this to keep the teeth clean and avoid dental problems like infection and tooth decay in the future. In other words we do this to avoid dental hassles. We want a hassle-free dental experience.

Now, when you compare best dental practices to keeping your computer running like new, you need to implement similar measures. Only this time instead of brushing and flossing you have to develop safe computer practices including purchasing the computer repair service money can buy. On top of that, you’ll also need to set up a safe practices guideline for everyone in your family.

A slow running computer or a computer that crashes frequently may be a sign of Malware (Trojans, viruses, worms, and other malicious code) on your computer. These hacker tools not only can be used to steal sensitive information from your computer they slow your computer down or even cause computer crashes. Unfortunately, traditional over-the-counter computer protection products don’t keep up with this growing problem. If they did would we continue to have these problems?

Over the last three years there’s been a huge shift from curious hackers to professional hackers creating devious methods to steal proprietary information from computers like yours. This evolving threat is costing individuals and businesses tens of billions of dollars every year. V. McNiven, an advisor to the U.S Department of treasury has stated, “The proceeds from cyber-crime are now greater than the sale of illegal drugs.

These evil hackers continue to find more devious ways of stealing financial and proprietary information. It is important that every individual, family and business have a computer repair service plan in place to protect themselves from these cyber terrorists.

You might be surprised to learn that computers that don’t go online are vulnerable through file sharing from infected flash drives, cds and floppies. These devices, when infected, can install scrambling software or logic bomb software that opens up the possibility of extortion to get your proprietary information back.

A 2007 PC Magazine survey of 42,000 PCs worldwide released last September showed the top speed killers. The problems included:

· Over 52 percent of the PCs surveyed were clogged up with spyware

· Over 60 percent of the PCs surveyed had un-optimized Internet settings slowing the Internet down and even signaling that spyware and other malware have secretly stolen portions of your bandwidth to run on your PC.

· Surveyed computers also contained an average of twelve serious registry problems per unit that may have been caused by spyware and other malware.

Incredible, many of these computers are supposedly protected by the over-the-counter products that aren’t doing what they promise to do. So how can individuals and small businesses protect against identity theft, fraud and extortion? How can they get their computers back to running like new again?

Here are six crucial steps to protecting your computer and making it fun and productive again:

1. Keep your computers patched. Microsoft has automatic patch updates. Make sure are signed up to receive them.

2. Use professional enterprise grade anti-virus and anti-spyware at the email and web gateways. Install a professional grade by-directional firewall to guard against backdoor threats.

3. Use sender-authentication technologies, such as Sender Policy Framework (SPF) to make phishing far more difficult since – In theory – phishers will only be able to send their spam from “unapproved” domains.

4. Develop and enforce a password policy. This will make passwords difficult to be guessed. Use a different password for each situation. Make sure these passwords are changed frequently. If you use one password for every web site, for example, and a phisher manages to steal it, all of your online activity is at risk. Sophos, an enterprise grade Internet Security Company, recently conducted a business poll and discovered 41 percent of the respondents were using the same password for all web sites.

5. Keep an eye on the advice from organizations promoting safe computing. Many of their web sites will list the latest threats, and give advice on how to protect your home and business against them.

6. Always report suspicious activity.

Just as important, find a computer repair service that offers “Personal Computer Services.” Your personal computer service should include online repair at no additional cost. The end result: hassle-free computing making being on the computer fun and productive again. With the right computer repair service, using computers at home and at work should be hassle-free allowing you to focus more on your home and business activities.

Warren Franklin is an advocate for personal and Internet Security. You can find more information at his web site at http://www.completeinternetprotection.com/pcfunagain.html or by calling 503-315-9847

Author: Warren Franklin
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
Provided by: US Dollar credit card

What Will You Learn Within This Series?

Part 1 – Cleaning your computer of viruses

Part 2 – Cleaning your computer of spyware

Part 3 – Cleaning your computer registry

Part 4 – Defragmenting your computer, and disk cleanup

Part 5 – Useful keyboard shortcuts

All of these tips should be used on a regular basis. Your computer is like a car, you need to change the oil, replace the tires, clean the interior frequently to ensure that your car is runs smoothly, that it keeps you safe, and remains clean.

Cleaning Your Computer of Viruses:

I think I can make the assumption that most of you have heard of computer viruses before? For those who haven’t, a computer virus is a program created by highly advanced programmers world wide with the intent on harming your computer in so many ways. Viruses can infect your computer, delete important files, corrupt your hard drive, or even make your computer unusable. Viruses can mean death to your computer. We are all subjectable to a virus attack, in fact millions of computers are infected with some form of virus right now as you read this, and your computer may be one of those infected.

Ways To Get Infected With A Virus:

• 1) – Firewall is not activated
• 2) – No anti-virus software
• 3) – Spam Email attachment
• 4) – File transfer via a messenger service
• 5) – Copying files from an infected CD, or floppy Disk
• 6) – Network of computers sharing files

A virus can infect your computer through any of the methods from above. Prevention is the key to making sure you don’t keep your computer to such attacks.

How To Prevent Viruses From Coming In:

1) Activate Your System Firewall:

You want to make sure that your firewall is active. A firewall blocks hackers from finding loop-holes within your computer that gives them a gateway (doorway) in. A firewall can help to stop most hackers, but not all of them.

Activating your firewall:

Windows systems: START > CONTROL PANNEL > INTERNET CONNECTIONS > WINDOWS FIREWALL > “On (Recommended)”.

Mac Users: APPLE MENU > SYSTEM PREFERENCES > SHARING PANE > FIREWALL > START

There you go; your firewall is now active!

2) Scan Your Computer With An Anti-Virus Software:

Installing an anti-virus software is key! An anti-virus software will help to monetize your computer for viruses. An anti-virus software will also help to perform a system wide scan of your computer for already infected areas.

Most newer computers come with an anti-virus software already installed; all you need to do is run the program.

Here are some of the top PAID anti-virus software’s:

(No particular order)

• Norton Ani-Virus By Symantec
• McAfee Ani-Virus
• BitDefender
• Kaspersky

Here are some of the top FREE anti-virus software’s:

(No particular order)

• AntiVir Personal Edition Classic 6.32
• Active Virus Shield (AOL)
• Alwil Software Avast Home Edition 4.6
• Grisoft AVG Free Edition 7.1

For more anti-virus software’s, with good editorial reviews go to: Download.com

Once installed, launch the program, and find a button that says “update virus definitions”. This will help to make sure your virus definitions are up-to-date. Virus definitions have the most recently found viruses that just came on the market. Up-to-date definitions are key to finding newer, more powerful viruses.

Once you’ve updated your definitions, close all running programs and perform a “full system scan”. Depending on your computers size, and speed, the scan can take up to a couple of hours to complete.

Once complete, hit a button that will say something like; “Quarantine Files”, “Delete Infected Files”, “Clean Up Files”, “Remove Infected Files”. This process will remove all files that have been flagged as a virus, and it will do this safely without harming your computer.

Things to know:

• Once a virus scan is complete, reboot your computer.
• Some viruses cannot be caught while your computer is running; they may have to be removed after a reboot (which should be automatic).
• You can setup a full system scan to start at 12 midnight every night.
• Scan your computer ATLEAST once a week if connected to the internet.

You’ll probably start to notice that your computer is running faster, this is because the viruses which were there before, are no longer using your computers memory to run consistently.

Some viruses are extremely resilient and cannot be removed from a simple virus scan. Going through (Part 2 & Part 3) will help to attack these harder-to-find viruses.

3) Don’t Open Suspicious Email attachments:

So many viruses are activated by people like yourself who open email attachments that they don’t recognize. Most viruses are distributed this way. Part 6 – “Useful Email tips & fighting spam” from this mini-series will go into greater detail on fighting spam, but for those of you who won’t get to read that article, I must mention a couple of things here:

• Do NOT open an email that you don’t recognize, or didn’t ask for!
• Do NOT open an attachment with the extension “.exe”.
• Immediately delete emails from people you don’t recognize
• Do NOT save emails onto your computer that you don’t recognize
• Spammers will try to trick you into thinking they are your friend
• Pay close attention at the person, email, and content from each email
• Do NOT click “Unsubscribe” from a spam email, this will do the opposite
• Do NOT reply back to an email you don’t recognize
• Do NOT forward an email that you don’t recognize
• Report ALL spam to your internet service provider

These email tips I just mentioned are part of the basic foundations to helping you fight spam, and to ensure that you don’t inadvertently activate a malicious virus onto your computer.

4) Avoid Using Messenger Services:

Messenger services, or “chat programs” on your computer are like leaving an open gateway pointing directly to your computer. Messenger services like “MSN Chat”, or “Yahoo Chat” connect two computers together in order to talk to each other over and over again. This allows the two computers to give, and receive information through the software.

An Example of What Can Happen:

Many viruses have infiltrated millions of computers through this easy to hack service by disguising itself as “your chat friends” and by sending you a link to a virus file to open up onto your computer. The problem is, you have no idea what kind of file you’re opening, because it seems as though the file came directly from your friend (who is infected by this virus), and it looks as though they are simply trying to send you a photo of themselves.

Personally, no one is allowed to have a messenger chat software installed on any of our computers. They are too easily misused, and can give a hacker a passport to your computer.

If your children use such a service, make sure to let them know of what can happen if they accept files from others. Tell them that it’s better to send files via an email attachment, rather than through a messenger chat script. At least this way, an email can pass through various firewalls, and anti-virus software’s before getting to your computer. This also ensures that you know exactly who is sending you the file.

5) Copying Files From An Infected CD, or Floppy Disk:

We’ve all done it, taken a disk from a friend, or co-worker, and inserted a disk into our computer in order to copy all the files from the disk. Did you ever think to scan the disk for viruses before copying any of the files?

Viruses come in all shapes & sizes, they are passed along from one computer to another. The person who gave you the disk could have had a virus lurking within their files, and they may have copied it onto the disk they just gave you. It happens all the time.

An easy way to protect yourself from getting viruses this way is to launch your anti-virus software, and scan your disk drive with the cd, or floppy disk in it. It takes only a couple of seconds to prevent a disaster.

6) Sharing Files From A Network of Computers:

Many companies network their computers together so that they can share files easily between the two, instead of always copying files onto a disk. The same thing happens at home as well when two computers are networked together. Make sure you have your firewall in place (step 1 above), and make sure your anti-virus software (step 2 above) is keeping an eye on your “shared folders” section. This just helps to prevent viruses from jumping one computer to another. Again, always perform a virus check within your “shared folder” when you receive files from others.

In Conclusion:

There you have it. You now have a good base of knowledge to help prevent viruses from getting into your computer. Make sure to make it a habit to double-check everything to ensure that you don’t unwillingly leave an open doorway directly to your computer. When using software’s like chat scripts, make sure not to accept files via your chat script. Never read, or open emails that you don’t recognize, and always make it a habit to scan your disks, hard drive, and email attachments before something terrible happens.

Now that you have some knowledge against fighting viruses, let’s move onto part 2 of this series which talks about fighting another form of attack against your computer, the deadly spyware!

Next: Part 2 – Cleaning your computer of spyware & ad-aware

About The Author:

Martin Lemieux is the owner of a successful article directory network with over 80,000 author submitted articles, with over 30,000 active authors world wide.

http://www.Article99.com – Authors Club
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Copyright, All Rights Reserved. Reprints accepted as long as the entire article remains the same including this author resource box.

Author: Martin Lemieux
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
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A generation of young people just leaving college and going out to seek their fortune have grown up with computers, and their computers have always been personal. They’ve always used a keyboard to enter data and have always viewed their work on a screen that reacted pretty much instantly to their input. Increasingly, they use a small portable computer with a flat high resolution screen, or maybe even a hand-held device, with a user interface they’ve customized to their own liking. Personal computing. Where did it come from?

I’ve had reason to think about this, having been involved in the early software business and having recently published a book about my experiences selling software in the late 1970s. The book is called Priming the Pump: How TRS-80 Enthusiasts Helped Spark the PC Revolution. In the book, co-authored with my husband David, we talk about how Steve Leininger, a newly-hired engineer and computer hobbyist, and Don French, a company insider, created this ground-breaking product for Tandy Corporation for under $150,000 in development costs. Tandy, parent of the nationwide chain of Radio Shack stores (3500 at the time) sold the TRS-80 for $599.95. It was the most expensive product Radio Shack had ever sold, and it was a phenomenal success, so successful that Radio Shack was overwhelmed with orders it couldn’t fill. People had to go on waiting lists to get one.

So was the TRS-80 the first truly personal computer? We do make the claim that it was the first mass produced (all made in factories in the US) off-the-shelf microcomputer. But in 1977, exactly thirty years ago, the TRS-80 was only one of three microcomputers introduced. There was also the PET from Commodore and the Apple I and II, designed by the guru of geekdom, Steve Wozniak. These three microcomputers hit the market that year, and for the TRS-80, it was the beginning of a series of upgrades and add-ons that eager users snapped up over the next seven or eight years. For Apple, their Apple II computer, which had color from the beginning and was a superb game machine, had an even longer run and sold in huge numbers. In fact, Steve Wozniak, in her new book, iWoz, claims that he “invented the personal computer” (iWoz: How I invented the personal computer, co-founded Apple, and had fun doing it, by Steve Wozniak and Gina Smith, Norton & Company, 2006). But did anyone really “invent” the personal computer?

Before there were personal computers, there were big corporate computers. In the 1960s, computers were large and expensive and did not have a screen. The input/output device was likely to be a teletype machine, itself a large, clunky and expensive machine. Or it may have been connected to a “terminal,” another expensive machine that did have a TV-like screen and a keyboard. You might think that this type of computer somehow evolved into the smaller ones we use today, but that is not so.

Small computers, known initially as microcomputers, arose in the 1970s as a result of developments in electronics, specifically the microprocessor, which let many components that used to be individually mounted on a board be part of one integrated device. This was a technology that moved fast once the principles were in place. Intel founder Gordon Moore observed the fast pace and declared a proposition: Moore’s Law stated that processing power would double every 18 months, and he’s proved right in this observation. But it was more than technical advances that brought about personal computing. It was also a pent-up desire on the part of many people to own their own computer. This is what drove Ted Nelson to write his self-published book, Computer Lib, in 1974 and later write that he sought “the freedom of people to do their own thing with computers.” It is what drove Ed Roberts to build the Altair, the first microcomputer, which appeared on the cover of Popular Electronics in January 1975. Roberts was once quoted as saying that he “lusted” after a computer of his own and that “to have a computer was better than sex.”

When the Intel 4004 chip came out, it was a beginning, but only a concept, as this first microprocessor did not do enough to power a computer. Then came the 8008 and finally the 8080, the one that became the brains of the Altair and the IMSAI, kit computers that found an eager following. These chips were expensive but soon there were other microprocessors, like the 6502 from MOS Technologies and the Z80 from Zilog. Among the fruit trees of northern California soon to be known as Silicon Valley, a young Steve Wozniak had obtained two 6502 microprocessors at a computer show for the incredibly cheap price of $20 each. The man selling them was Chuck Peddle, who had designed them. I recently heard Chuck give a talk (via internet) to the Vintage Computer Festival in New Jersey in which he stated that his company, MOS Technologies, had experienced many quality control problems and a lot of the chips did not work. He wanted to conceal the problems and make it look like he had produced the chips in abundance, so he filled a barrel with them, but only the ones on top actually worked! Good thing Woz got two that worked, because with those he built the first Apple.

Chuck Peddle sold out to Commodore, which began work on a microcomputer project. Wozniak says in his book that Peddle came to see the prototype Apple II in Steve Jobs’ garage and was considering buying the rights to it, but Commodore decided to do their own design. The Commodore PET, released in 1977, had a keyboard for input and a tape cassette for storage; it was a complete system.

In 1976, another Steve – Steve Leininger – was working at National Semiconductor and moonlighting at Paul Terrell’s Byte Shop, where Wozniak’s Apple I models were for sale. Terrell launched Jobs and Wozniak into a real business with a $50,000 order for the hand-built computer, which had no keyboard or monitor; it was really just a board that hobbyists could make into a real computer with add-ons. Leininger found himself talking one day to some buyers from Tandy Corporation, parent of Radio Shack. He later received an offer of employment and was flown to Fort Worth Texas to meet with John Roach, company CEO, and the man who would be his partner in designing the TRS-80, Don French.

The TRS-80 Model I, introduced in August 1977, had some features that the others lacked. Unlike the annoying “chiclet” keyboard of the PET, the TRS-80 had a full size keyboard. The PET came with a monitor, but the TRS-80 had a larger one. Most importantly, the PET was an all-in-one case model, with no expandability, but the TRS-80 was designed for expansion; the tape cassette recorder (the storage device) and the monitor were separate and could be replaced with something else. Eventually, Radio Shack released an “expansion interface” that let users connect a disk drive and add more memory. The TRS-80, with the BASIC language built-in, could accomplish many useful tasks, and its popularity went well beyond the enthusiastic hobbyist market. Small business owners were among the most eager buyers.

The initial events that made the personal computer possible were about technical advances – better, faster microprocessors – and hardware innovations, such as the five-inch disk drive. But the next wave of innovation that made computers essential to modern life was software, all kinds of software that helped people do common tasks more efficiently. Word Processing. Accounting. Mail lists. Database. And the first “killer app” – spreadsheets, beginning with VisiCalc. At the same time, microcomputers were a new form of entertainment. Games were tremendously popular; some mimicked the arcade games of the day and others were analogies to board games like chess. Some broke new ground for gaming, like Scott Adams’ Adventure games, and the popular Oregon Trail. Without all the programmers out there creating useful applications, the computer would never be personal. In our case, David created a word processor called Lazy Writer. It received rave reviews in the many computer magazines that reviewed popular software. We sold copies all over the US and the world, with many buyers in Australia (who used a TRS-80 clone machine called the Dick Smith System 80). We never got rich selling software, but we felt the excitement of being part of something that really was a revolution.

So who invented personal computing? Was it Steve Wozniak, with his amazing designs, or was it Ed Roberts, who believed people lusted after a kit that let them build a computer called Altair, was it Chuck Peddle who gave the world a cheap microprocessor, or was it Leininger and French who built the TRS-80, a machine that had so many fans? Notice that I have not even mentioned Bill Gates or the IBM PC. Gates was there from the beginning, and he too has a claim on inventing personal computing. It was Gates who created the version of the BASIC language that was in the Altair and who later supplied the operating system for the IBM PC, the machine that first gave us the term, “Personal Computer.” But it seems clear to me that the vision of a personal computer was out there long before IBM got into the act. In fact, it seems unlikely that we can ever name one person who deserves the credit for “inventing” personal computing. A computer as a personal tool – an idea that was in the ether, as they say, and that had many inventors, both through breakthroughs in hardware and creativity in software.

The tremendous strides we’ve made in how we use our computers is exemplified for me in two remarks from family members. The first was something my daughter, born in 1985, said to me some years back. She said that when she first heard that computers were once huge machines that filled a room, she pictured in her mind a giant modern computer, with a gigantic screen filling a whole wall and a huge keyboard, with a person jumping from one enormous key to another. She couldn’t see how else a computer could fill a room. The other remark was just recently made by my sister, who is relatively new to computer ownership. She had finished reading my book, which she said she enjoyed despite her lack of computer savvy, and I was pleased because we did not intend our book just for geeks. Then she said, “I always thought early computers would be kind of like modern ones only maybe slower, but now I see that they were completely different.” My first reaction to this was wanting to say “No they weren’t,” but I didn’t say that because I wanted to think about why she would make this remark. I realized that the way a user interacts with a PC today really is completely different from looking at a screen displaying a blinking cursor and the word “Ready.” That’s what we used to see on our TRS-80 when we turned it on. It was ready for us to give it a command and until we did, it would do nothing. And it could only do one thing at a time. Just look at the graphics, sound and interactivity of modern personal computers and, even though they are the descendants of the blank screen with a blinking cursor, the way we use computers and take their amazing abilities for granted is completely different from the era of microcomputers that dazzled us thirty years ago.

You can buy Priming the Pump from the book website at http://www.microcomputerpioneers.com or from amazon.com.

Theresa Welsh is co-author of Priming the Pump: How TRS-80 Enthusiasts Helped Spark the PC Revolution (www.microcomputerpioneers.com) and two other books. She and her husband David started a software business selling TRS-80 software in the late 1970s and early 1980s, and she continued working in IT, first at EDS and later as a contract worker at Ford Motor Company. She currently is a free-lance writer and editor and operates a book review website at http://www.theseekerbooks.com

Author: Theresa Welsh
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
Provided by: Creditcard Currency Conversion Fee

Pervasive computing is the trend towards increasingly ubiquitous (another name for the movement is ubiquitous computing), connected computing devices in the environment, a trend being brought about by a convergence of advanced electronic – and particularly, wireless – technologies and the Internet. Pervasive computing devices are not personal computers as we tend to think of them, but very tiny – even invisible – devices, either mobile or embedded in almost any type of object imaginable, including cars, tools, appliances, clothing and various consumer goods – all communicating through increasingly interconnected networks.

Modern devices that may serve the ubiquitous computing model include mobile phones, digital audio players, radio-frequency identification tags and interactive whiteboards. Other terms for ubiquitous computing include pervasive computing, calm technology, things that think, everyware, and more recently, pervasive Internet.

Ubiquitous computing encompasses a wide range of research topics, including distributed computing, mobile computing, sensor networks, human-computer interaction, and artificial intelligence.

HISTORY

Pervasive computing is the third wave of computing technologies to emerge since computers first appeared:

o First Wave – Mainframe computing era: one computer shared by many people, via

workstations.

o Second Wave – Personal computing era: one computer used by one person, requiring a

conscious interaction. Users largely bound to desktop.

o Third Wave – Pervasive (initially called ubiquitous) computing era: one person, many

computers. Millions of computers embedded in the environment, allowing technology

to recede into the background.

BACKGROUND

Eight billion embedded microprocessors are produced each year. This number is expected to rise dramatically over the next decade, making electronic devices ever more pervasive. These devices will range from a few millimeters in size (small sensors) to several meters (displays and surfaces). They may be interconnected via wired and wireless technologies into broader, more capable, networks. Pervasive computing systems and services may lead to a greater degree of user knowledge of, or control over, the surrounding environment, whether at home, or in an office or car.There have been calls for more widespread debate on the implications of pervasive computing while it is still at an early stage of development.

PERVASIVE COMPUTING TECHNOLOGIES

Pervasive computing technologies classified in to four converging areas

- Mobile Computing

- Embedded and Applied computing

- RFID and Sensors

- Mobile and sensor networking

Mobile Computing

The widespread use of mobile computing devices has changed the way people compute and vastly expanded research areas in distributed computing and networking. In fact, traditional distributed computing is actually a subset of the broad area of mobile computing. Many topics in “mature” areas like distributed databases, distributed fault tolerance, and resource management now require much additional study, because many traditional assumptions are challenged. Mobile computers operate in more hostile environments, are resource-constrained (limited power, frequent disconnection), and are peripheral-poor.

Mobile computing is changing the way we live and work, as profoundly as the introduction of the automobile did almost a century ago. Key advances in mobile networking, wireless connectivity, mobile information access, content adaptation, data synchronization, technology for notebook and wearable computers, and innovative mobile e-business solutions have come from worldwide research laboratories..

Some of the recent research in mobile computing includes:

WEARABLE DISPLAY OF ATHLETES’ STATISTICS

TeamAwear is a basketball jersey that displays real-time information about its wearer’s statistics such as their fouls, points, and scores and alerts players when the game is nearly over or when time is running out to shoot. Mitchell Page and Andrew Vande Moere at the Centre of Design Computing and Cognition of the University of Sydney developed the system, which consists of numerous colored electroluminescent panels. A small computer attached to the player’s body controls the panels and communicates wirelessly with a server that tracks relevant game statistics. For example, panels on the jersey’s side light up to show how many goals the wearer has scored, with each panel representing 10 goals Although the inventors developed the TeamAwear jersey originally for basketball, they claim that it could also work in other fast-paced sports in which player-specific data changes rapidly, such as soccer, volleyball, cricket, and baseball. It could also support emergency teams working in noisy environments where verbal communication is inefficient.

SKYSCOUT

If you’ve ever looked at the night sky and wondered what stars you were observing, Celestron’s SkyScout might be for you. Especially useful for novice astronomers, this handheld device combines GPS technology with a map of the sky to identify, locate, and provide information about celestial bodies. To identify an object of interest, you simply view it through the SkyScout and press the Identify button. SkyScout’s technology identifies the object and tells you what it is. To locate a celestial body, you select it from a reasonably easy-touse menu of objects and press the Locate button. SkyScout uses red directional arrows around the eyepiece to guide you to the object in the sky. A nice feature is that the menu shows only objects that should be visible. (Unfortunately, Sky- Scout has no way to know which of those objects are blocked by trees). Finally, the device can educate you about many of the more popular celestial bodies. The information is available both through audio and text and includes facts about the object and its history and mythology. SkyScout’s release was delayed in 2006 because of manufacturing problems in one of the components.

NOKIA NSERIES PHONES

Nokia has announced three new mobile phones in its multimedia Nseries, each targeting a different market segment. The N71, N80, and N92 offer a long list of features. The N71, from the Nokia XpressMusic family, offers an FM stereo tuner, a five-band equalizer, and support for audio and video formats including MP3, AAC, eAAC+, WMA, JPEG, and MPEG-4. It offers a 240 _ 320-pixel display and two cameras, one 2-megapixel (1600 _ 1200 pixel) and the other VGA (640 _ 480 pixel). It operates on dual-mode wideband code division multiple access (WCDMA)/GSM and triband GSM. The N80 offers a 352 _ 416-pixel display and a 3-megapixel camera with features including four flash modes, 10 scene modes, manual exposure correction, and four color tones.

Embedded and Applied Computing

Embedded and ubiquitous computing is an exciting new paradigm that provides computing and communication services all the time and everywhere. Its systems are now affecting every aspect of our life to the point that they are hidden inside various appliances. This emergence is a natural outcome of research and technological advances in embedded systems. An Embedded Pervasive Computing Environment is equipped with hardware and software components that autonomously respond to the needs of its occupants. Embedded system is the core part of pervasive computing and it deals with various applications like wearable computer architecture and applications, sensor networks, real-time embedded operating systems, embedded servers, embedded system networking, address-free routing, smart spaces, dynamic service discovery, mobility and case studies. Some of the on-going researches in embedded systems include:

ROLLABLE DISPLAY

Who hasn’t dreamt of a display that rolls up when not in use? Phillips took one step toward this dream on a commercial scale when it formed venture company Polymer Vision in January 2004. Polymer Vision recently reported that it can make a flexible display with a 2 cm bending radius. The display is an organics-based, QVGA (320 240 pixels) active-matrix display, 5 in. on the diagonal and 85 dpi. The display layers a 200-micron thick, reflective Electronic-Ink display from E Ink Corporation (www.eink.com) on top of a 25-micron thick, active-matrix plane.

USING LANDLINES FOR CELLULAR CALLS

Xcelis (www.xcelis.com) has developed an innovative product for coupling cell phones and landline handsets. The Pantheon (see Figure 3) plugs into a landline phone line and, using a Bluetooth connection, routes incoming and outgoing voice calls and data from users’ cell phones to their landline handsets. The Pantheon indicates incoming mobile calls with a distinctive ring. While the mobile call is in progress, it doesn’t tie up the landline, meaning you can still receive landline calls through your other telephones.
You need one device for each landline telephone that you want to multiplex. When making calls from your landline, you can choose whether to use your cell phone or landline account. The Pantheon provides additional features, including conferencing a landline call and a mobile call, accessing a user’s mobile phonebook from a landline phone, and switching mid-call from a landline phone to a mobile phone. The Pantheon is also compatible with voice over IP handsets.

BIONIC ARM

Todd Kuiken at the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago at the Northwestern Feinberg School of Medicine has developed a thought-powered bionic arm. The arm is based on a pioneering muscle reinnervation procedure that takes an amputee’s nerves and connects them to a healthy muscle. Doctors take nerves that used to go to the arm and connect them to chest muscles. The nerves grow into the chest muscles and can contract the muscle when the patient thinks, for example, “Close hand.” Electrical signals from the chest muscles drive the arm. Surface electrodes sense these impulses from the pectoral muscle and carry them through to the arm, causing it to move. Jesse Sullivan, a high-power lineman who had both of his arms amputated after being severely electrocuted, is the first patient to be outfitted with bionic arms. The arms have enabled him to do daily activities such as put on socks, shave, eat dinner, take out the garbage, carry groceries, and vacuum. Future generations of the arm will incorporate the sense of touch and feeling.

Mobile and Sensor networking

Sensor mobility allows better coverage in areas where events occur frequently in many sensor networks, considerably more units are available than necessary for simple coverage of the space. Augmenting sensor networks with motion can exploit this surplus to enhance sensing while also improving the network’s lifetime and reliability. When a major incident such as a fire or chemical spill occurs, several sensors can cluster around that incident. This ensures good coverage of the event and provides immediate redundancy in case of failure another use of mobility comes about if the specific area of interest (within a larger area) is unknown during deployment. For example, if a network is deployed to monitor the migration of a herd of animals, the herd’s exact path through an area will be unknown beforehand. But as the herd moves, the sensors could converge on it to get the maximum amount of data. In addition, the sensors could move such that they also maintain complete coverage of their environment while reacting to the events in that environment. In this way, at least one sensor still detects any events that occur in isolation, while several sensors more carefully observe dense clusters of events. On going researches in sensor networking includes:

WORLDWIDE BROADBAND WIRELESS ACCESS

Option is offering a PC data card that can access wireless broadband worldwide. You can use the GlobeTrotter GT Max on the 850, 1900, or 2100 MHz HSDPA/UMTS (High-Speed Downlink Packet Access/Universal Mobile Telecommunications System) networks and the 850, 900, 1800, or 1900 MHz EDGE/ GPRS (General Packet Radio Service) bands. The card can support data speeds up to 1.8 megabits per second on HSDPA networks, 384 kilobits per second on UMTS networks, 247 Kbps on EDGE networks, and 85 Kbps on GPRS networks. It’s a Type II PCMCIA (Personal Computer Memory Card International Association)-compliant 3.3-V PC card and includes a novel “Butterfly” retractable antenna that doesn’t require users to remove the card when it’s not in use. Numerous wireless carriers offer the card, including Cingular, which recently announced that it would offer it under two plans. One plan will cost users $110 per month and includes unlimited data use in the US and 100 Mbytes of downloads in Canada and Mexico. The other plan will cost $140 and will include unlimited use in the US and 100 Mbytes of downloads in 24 countries including Australia, China, France, Italy, and Germany.

THE SELF-CLEANING HOUSE OF THE FUTURE

The house of the future won’t need cleaning. Not by humans, leastways. Every surface will be dirt-repellent and antibacterial; and on the floors the vacuum cleaner is buzzing around – all on its own. The outer walls are all glass which can be screened off entirely and the interior surface used as TV screen. The scenario of the self-cleaning house belongs in the distant future, maybe 20 years from now. With the rapidly increasing development of nanotechnology we have seen for the past few years, it is not easy to predict a specific time span and it will be not only self-cleaning but also self-sufficient, energy wise. Today, the Australians are already experimenting with nanoglass-houses where the glass can be treated with a pigmented coating rendering the entire house non-transparent – the roof included.

WALL SENSORS

The house of the future will be capable of alerting its owner if it’s in need of repair. The building materials will, of course, be susceptible to wear and tear due to wind and weather, and they will therefore have built-in sensors. When these sensors appear, the house computer will receive a message that this particular section needs repair. A variety of conditions are similarly monitored. This way, house owners can cheaply repair worn materials and avoid major, expensive repairs after the damage has been done.

THE INTELLIGENT HOUSE

The intelligent house of the future will alert the fire brigade in case of fire when you’re at work. Or, if you’ve got a leaky water pipe, it will get hold of the plumber. Multifunctional sensors throughout the house will keep an eye on heating, lights, indoor climate etc. The house of the future will comprise two major digital gateways. One gateway will be the media server which comprises the complete collection of the family’s music, films, photos etc. Another feature will be the highly secure homegateway – a server communicating with the many sensors distributed all over the house to monitor heating, indoor climate etc. The two gateways are separate entities, as the security on the homegateway needs to be exceedingly tight. This gateway should not be exposed to hacking, which could have fatal consequences with respect to security. If, for instance, the motion detectors are tampered with, the burglar alarm might be disabled. Likewise, it would be an unpleasant experience to come home to a room temperature of 40 degrees Celcisus, because someone is mad at you and has hacked into your system to change the temperature settings Thus, each room in the house of the future will be equipped with small sensors. – Larger rooms may have several. They will measure the physical conditions in the room and communicate with the homegateway which will then take care of the Internet-based communication out of the house.

RFID and Sensors

Radio frequency identification (RFID) technology uses radiofrequency waves to transfer data between readers and movable tagged objects without line of sight. RFID holds the promise of real-time identifying, locating, tracking and monitoring physical objects, and can be used for a wide range of pervasive computing applications. To achieve these goals, RFID data have to be collected, transformed and expressively modeled as their virtual counterparts in the virtual world. RFID data, however, have their own unique characteristics – including aggregation, location, temporal and history-oriented – which have to be fully considered and integrated into the data model. The diversity of RFID applications pose further challenges to a generalized framework for RFID data modeling. Today, Radio Frequency Identification enjoys an enormous interest as the first widely deployed pervasive technology as not only from the standpoint of research
but also from Corporate practices future. Some of the recent researches in RFID technologies include:

TAGS EVERYWHERE

The Ubiquitous ID Center provides the infrastructure for managing electronic tags embedded in or attached to objects in a ubiquitous environment. The center developed the ucode, a multicode tag that automatically identifies information stored in bar codes, RFID chips, smart cards, and electronic tags embedded in virtual entities such as software and electronic money. Comparable to the ISBN (International Standard Book Numbering) code used in the publishing industry, the UID Center assigns unique numbers to each tag and stores data relating to the object in database servers. The ucode tags use a 128-bit code that can be extended in 128-bit units, creating a virtually limitless string of numbers. To navigate this tagged environment, the UID Center developed the Ubiquitous Communicator, a PDA-like device that reads ucode tags and retrieves the relevant data from the UID Center’s server database. The standard UC has a host of features, including wireless LAN, Voice over Internet Protocol, infrared data communication, and a biometric reader. Apart from the PDA-like version, the UID Center developed a cell phone model and a watch style. At home, it will serve as the remote control for home entertainment systems and appliances. In the office, it will read a printer’s tag and order a replacement cartridge as needed

FROM UPC TO RFID

Smart packaging became a possibility with the introduction of small battery-free microprocessors called RFID (Radio Frequency Identification Device) tags. Though these have been commercially available for a number of years, they have been too clunky and too expensive for use in packaging. This situation is changing rapidly: industry experts predict that the price per tag will fall to under 10 cents each in the course of five years or so. The new generation of RFID tags can take the form of a sticker like the classic bar codes, or they can be directly integrated into the packaging material itself. They consist of a silicon microprocessor and some form of radio antenna–conductive carbon ink is replacing the more expensive metal coil of earlier tag types. This radio antenna functions as both input/output channel and power source. Electricity is generated in the antenna by either a magnetic field or a radio signal; the tag responds by sending out a radio signal in turn. This reply signal contains metadata stored on the chip, typically an ID number .With the help of RFID readers–in our cell phones, in supermarket freezers and check-outs, in our private fridges–we will be able to retrieve information about a particular item based on its ID number. In fact, the first cell phones with built-in readers, based on NFC (Near Field Communication) technology, are already on the market.

NEXT-GENERATION TAGS

The smart tags which will soon begin replacing bar codes in our supermarkets are actually pretty dumb: their only ability is reciting their ID code on command. With the next generation of MEMS tags, the epithet ’smart’ will be more fitting. MEMS (Micro Electro Mechanical Systems) tags are able to perform measurements and calculations. MEMS tags are especially interesting in connection with extremely perishable goods like milk and meat. Studies have shown that the ’sell by’ date on such products is dubious at best: milk only stays fresh until the given date as long as it is stored at the right temperature. Storage is the key term here; for example, that the temperature in around one-fifth of the meat and dairy cases in American supermarkets is three or four degrees too high. And what happens when we leave the milk out on the kitchen counter all morning? MEMS tags in smart packages will be able to take the milk’s temperature every fifteen minutes. The measurements are then sent to a small microprocessor which calculates the milk’s estimated freshness.

FOOD SAFETY

The fridge of the future will have a door with a built-in scanner for reading the digital tags on food packages. This way the refrigerator will always keep abreast of what is put into it; and the screen on the door can supply an overview of what’s behind the door. By scanning all foodstuffs, you will always have an updated listing of your current supplies – canned and frozen food included. In other words: the refrigerator comes to play the part of digital administrator of the kitchen. Should you e.g. keep food approaching its expiry date, the fridge will alert you. The product can then be used at once, and you avoid having to throw away food. The screen is connected to the Internet, and each and every chip tagged to the packaging will represent a Web site which can be visited by the fridge as the food products are stowed away. Thus it can check for any warnings issued for this particular product. We all remember instances of contaminated food which, undetected by producers, have ended up in supermarkets and, consequently, household fridge or freezer. In such cases, an alert from the refrigerator could reduce the risks considerably. Since the fridge frequently runs automatic checks on the net, users are no longer dependent on radio and TV alerts.

Editor:

Mr.S.Vijayakumar

Research Associate – TIFAC-CORE

Velammal Engineering College

Chennai – 600 066

Email: Vijayece2002@yahoo.co.in

CURRICULUM VITAE

S. VIJAYAKUMAR mobile: +91-9841214404
E-mail: vijayece2002@yahoo.co.in

OBJECTIVE

To develop technical expertise in a particular field & use these expertises along with my communication & Managerial Skills to carve a niche for myself in whatever venture, I undertake & produce works of good caliber

EXPERIENCE

- Working as a Research Associate in velammal Engineering College, Chennai from Feb 2007 to till date.
- Worked as a Project Trainee in Kiona software solutions, Bangalore from Nov 05 to July 06. EDUCATIONAL QUALIFICATIONS

- M.Tech in Embedded Systems

SASTRA (Deemed University), Thanjavur, Tamilnadu during 2003 – 05.
- B. Tech in Electronics & Communications Engineering

Jayaram College of Engineering and Technology, T.N during

1999 – 2003.
- H.S.C from Board of Intermediate Education, T.N
- S.S.C.L from Board of Secondary Education, T.N

TEC

Author: Vijayakumar Sargunam
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
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