Peter Wilson
Sun

You have all your appointments at work on an Outlook calendar. Meanwhile, your spouse’s daily activities are set out on a Google calendar online. And the school activities of your children are inscribed minute by minute, hour by hour, on iCal from Apple.

This lack of digital calendar coordination makes it tough for any modern family to stay on top of where they’re supposed to be and when.

Well, Andrzej Kowalski, CEO of Vancouver-based Time Search Inc., feels your pain — and he believes he has a solution that the whole world is going to want.

It’s called Calgoo, and it’s a cross-platform — Windows, Mac OSX, Linux — computer program that coordinates Outlook, Google and iCal calendars into one that will list everything your family is doing.

“This way my wife knows when I’m going to leave early and come home late,” said Kowalski. “I know when certain family social events are taking place. And I can check to make sure that there’s no school play when I’m setting up appointments.”

As well, adds Kowalski, Calgoo (www.calgoo.com) will solve problems for business people.

“There are whole bunches of businesses that can’t afford to operate shared calendaring,” said Kowalski, whose company is privately held. “As a small business owner, I now not only see my wife’s and my son’s schedules, but I also see those of my co-workers.”

As more calendars come online, Calgoo will add synchronization with them, and will also be available on PDAs and cellphones.

At the moment, Calgoo — which recently was judged best in the desktop category at the Under the Radar conference in Silicon Valley — is a free download, but it will soon be joined by a for-pay version.

Kowalski said that Calgoo has three additional ways of making money.

“We also have an advertising play on an event-based model,” said Kowalski. “Right now if advertisers want to advertise an event to you — whether it’s the Abbotsford Air Show or a hockey game or a concert — they’ll send you an e-mail, if they have your address, or they’ll put an ad on a Web page.”

With Calgoo, he said, advertisers will send messages to users about events.

“You’ll be able to scrutinize them and click through to a Web page that will tell you more about the event and let you buy tickets for it. You’ll also be able to click on it and put it right into your Calgoo calendar.”

As well, there will be an advertising-supported Web page where the various online calendars will be ranked and discussed by users.

Finally, said Kowalski, Electronic Arts Canada co-founder Bruce McMillan has joined Time Search’s advisory board and will help it develop Calgoo for gamers who want to coordinate the times they get together for their online encounters.

“Ultimately, what we hope will come out of this is another calendar, which will be your game schedule.”

© The Vancouver Sun 2007

 

Users to see and hear person called in real time

Province

TORONTO — Don’t be surprised if you start seeing people walking around holding their cellphones out in front of them, talking to the screen, perhaps bumping into things along the way.

With a new service launched yesterday by Rogers Wireless Inc., cellphone users for the first time in North America will be able to use video calling on their handsets, allowing them to see and hear the person they’re talking to in real-time via webcam.

To see each other, callers at both ends of the conversation have to use the Rogers Vision Samsung A706 handset model.

The webcam is set up so that users have to face the screen and talk over a speakerphone, which could give quiet businesses like bookstores and restaurants that already despise voice-only cellphones another reason to grumble. Users can also click a button to activate a camera on the opposite side of the phone to show the person on the other end of the line what they’re seeing.

The phones also offer high-speed Internet and multimedia services, including mobile television and downloadable radio and video-on-demand clips from sources like YouTube.com, XM Satellite and Rogers MusicStore.

The video-calling service was described by Rogers as “a landmark in wireless communications,” and even drew Canadian actor William Shatner to promote its launch at a news conference in Toronto.

But it wasn’t drawing much excitement from one industry expert, who questioned its practicality and wondered why those doing video calling with affordable webcams on PCs would make the switch.

“In research that we did in the latter half of 2006, we found that about 11 per cent of Canadian online users were doing video calling from [PCs],” said Tony Olvet of technology consultancy IDC Canada Ltd.

“So that’s in kind of an ideal environment where you have a decent [web]cam and you have that kind of fairly stable connection. So when you convert that to the mobile or wireless space, you’re naturally going to see a dropoff not only in terms of adoption because of the handset issue . . . but also [because of] the data charges to run that call over the HSDPA network.”

HSDPA stands for High Speed Downlink Packet Access, which is the latest evolution of Rogers’ GSM cellular network.

Rogers is charging $99.99 for the Samsung A706 with a three-year term on its Vision price plan. The wireless video costs 25 cents per minute in addition to standard voice plans. Alternatively, users can buy a video calling plan that costs $5 per month and includes 50 minutes of video calling time.

The price point might deter some people from adopting the technology, said Olvet, since carrying on a smooth conversation when first using the webcam could prove tricky.

“There’s a lot of, I guess, reticence among consumers to try new data services without really understanding what it’s going to mean for them at the end of the month when they look at their bill,” said Olvet.

Another issue that could slow adoption of the technology is its limited availability. The Vision service is only offered in southern Ontario. Rogers plans to extend service to major markets throughout 2007.

© The Vancouver Province 2007

 

AIRPLAY BOOST: External antenna improves quality of signal and of sound

Jim Jamieson
Province

Published: Sunday, April 01, 2007

What is it? XtremeMac AirPlay Boost

Price: $57

Why you need it: You want the flexibility of listening to your iPod on your home stereo and in your car but don’t want to have to hard-wire it.

Why you don’t: You’ve tried the FM-broadcasting solution before, and the quality isn’t quite up to your audiophile standards.

Our rating: 5 mice

There is nothing new about streaming iPod tunes via an FM transmitter.

These little add-on devices have been around for a few years, as a huge third-party accessory industry grew up around the skyrocketing popularity of Apple’s music player.

But the general knock has been the inconsistent quality of the signal — in conditions that vary widely from in the home to a moving automobile.

With this in mind, XtremeMac recently launched the AirPlay Boost — an FM transmitter that addresses broadcast issues by virtue of an external antenna that provides a stronger signal for iPod-to-stereo transmission.

We ran the AirPlay Boost through its paces at home as well as in the car and found it easy to operate. We were also impressed with the quality of the music — which to our tin ears sounded no different from a wired source.

The tiny device connects to the iPod dock’s connector port (and includes a pass-through so you can connect a charger).

You simply tune the transmitter and an FM stereo to the same empty frequency and hit your iPod’s play button.

Unlike most of these devices, the AirPlay Boost uses the iPod’s screen for navigation — although you don’t need to do much. It includes three programmable station pre-sets and operates in stereo and mono modes.

The product line includes models for the video iPod and the Nano 2G. Available online at the www.xtrememac.com website for $49.95 US or locally at Mac Station.

© The Vancouver Province 2007

 

Sun

HANNspree HANNSfries 10-inch LCD television, no price yet and no date for release.

Not, of course, that you’d want to encourage any children of yours to eat fries with huge dabs of ketchup — or, in fact, put anything in their rooms that would cause them to watch even more television than they do, but, hey, this does look cute. It’s a packet of friesTV set from HANNspree (www.hannspree-usa.com) which is noted for its free form video hardware offerings that brighten up a home, especially if you’re into the pop art of decades ago.

LG Chocolate Flip (LG 8600) wireless phone, $130 with a three-year Telus contract, $330 without a contract.

Stylish and sleek is how Telus describes this latest offering from LG, which comes with television, radio (commercial free from XM Canada) and MP3s, a 1.3 megapixel camera and camcorder, downloadable video clips and games. As well, users in British Columbia, Alberta and parts of Ontario can use Telus Navigator, which offers real-time audio and visual turn-by-turn directions to help you get to your destination. Oh, and you can use it to phone people.

Motion Computing LE1700 Core 2 Duo tablet PC, starting at $2,200 US.

Aimed at professionals in fields like health care, field sales and services, government and the hospitality industry, the LE1700 has what it calls WriteTouch display that allows you to both write with a digital pen and with a simple double tap on the screen to switch to using your finger to enter data. And while the WriteTouch system will allow both pen and finger input it won’t respond to anything else touching the screen. Also comes with a biometric fingerprint reader that can operate as a mouse.

Samsung SPH-m610 wireless phone, $150 with a three-year contract from Bell Mobility, $350 without a contract.

The word from the Duchess of Windsor (you do remember her, don’t you?) was that you couldn’t be too slim and apparently both Bell and Samsung have taken this to heart with the SPH-m610, which is less than half an inch thick. Oh, and should you care, once you’ve seen the phone, it will allow you to view movies, listen to stereo MP3 sound, offers TV on the go, ringtones and screen savers, as well as allowing you to phone your friends to let them know that your phone is so thin they’ll squeal with envy.

© The Vancouver Sun 2007

Roselind Hejl
Sun

Have you surfed real estate sites lately?  Many still make some fundamental mistakes that tend to drive visitors away, rather than offering a rich experience that people will return to.  A visitor who has come back to your site several times is well on his way toward picking up the phone or sending an email, and beginning a business friendship with you.

The primary goal of a website should be to establish your message quickly and simply. Visitors scan sites rapidly, and want to move immediately to information that benefits them.  Here are some ways to stop them from doing just that!

1.  Force visitors to sit through your flash introduction.  (“It’s a bird, it’s a plane?no, it’s…the title to this website.  If you need a “Skip Intro” button, you’re off on the wrong foot.”)

2.  Impress your visitors with some cool text on top of background graphics, or, even better, some cool text on top of background text.  (“Honey, where are my 3-D glasses?”)

3.  Shake things up with a blast of your favorite music.  (“It’s midnight, and I think I’ll do a little house hunting before bed…”)

4.  What is this?  Blue text over black background.  (“I thought this was a website, not a cave.  Honey, where’s my flashlight?”)

5.  Come up with a spiffy new layout for each page.  (“Let’s see, which site was this anyway?”)

6.  OK, folks, let’s see how well you can find your way around!  Notice we have dozens of links scattered around the page…  (“Honey, get out the ball of string and bread crumbs.”)

7.  Here are some fun link puzzles! You’ll find that some links duplicate other links, but with different names. Try to guess which!  (“Oh-oh, I opened this one already…”)

8.  Oh boy, it’s one of those ads that flash at lightning speed.  (“May cause nausea, headaches, blurred vision…”)

9.  If one font does not make your site interesting, try six or seven, plus some bold , and a SMATTERING OF ALL CAPS.  (“A little subtlety, please!”)

10.  Hmm, the middle of the page is moving, but the sides are just hanging there.  This does not seem quite right…  (“Children, don’t ask why, but a long time ago, people used a thing called ‘frames’.”)

11.  So, what’s the main course on this site?  Well, tonight we’re having some canned content: Seven Deadly Mistakes Sellers Make. (“Who cooks up this stuff, anyway?”)

12.  Excuse me, folks, this text is for Google! (“Repeat after me…home for sale, for sale home, sale home, home sale, for home, home for…”)

13.  Pop ups!  (“Back button, please! I’m out of here.”)

14.  Have we got a ton of photos for you!  Just sit back and relax. They may take a while to load. (“Oh, here we are on our trip to Vegas…!”)

15.  And speaking of me, there is sooo much more to say… (“And in 1982 I received several awards for…”)

16.  And now you can read my new syndicated real estate blog! (“The other day I was chatting with an agent who sits in the cubicle next to me at the office about the use of open house signs…”)

17.  I’m game! Let’s see how long can we make this page? (“It’s three feet long! Oh wait, there’s more.”)

18.  Cram your hundreds of reciprocal links on the main page. (“What is all this stuff at the bottom? Aah, helpful links. Car repair in Bulgaria ?”)

19. OK, people, let’s cut to the chase: You either fill out this questionnaire, or nothing doing! (“Oh, well, I didn’t really need to be doing this right now.”)

20.  Wait, don’t leave!  Here’s some interesting real estate trivia! (?Why is the Terra Amata site famous??)

21.  Not so fast, folks!  Welcome to Hotel California. Your fancy back button has been disabled!  (“Relax,” said the night man, “we are programmed to receive. You can check out anytime you like… but you can never leave.”)

Jefferson Graham
USA Today

SAN DIEGO — MediaFlo President Gina Lombardi is showing off her TV studio. More than 100 TV monitors display satellite feeds from CBS, NBC, Fox and cable networks, all being rebroadcast — to cellphones.

MediaFlo USA, a subsidiary of cellphone chipmaker Qualcomm, has quietly set up a broadcast TV network to bring prime-time shows to customers of Verizon Wireless’ VCast service, and soon to Cingular customers.

Unlike prior mobile TV offerings, VCast Mobile TV is full of complete prime-time fare, including shows such as CBS’ CSI, NCIS and Survivor, NBC’s The Office and Heroes, Fox’s House and late-night comedy shows from David Letterman, Jay Leno and Jon Stewart.

“Leave the big screen at home, and take your TV with you, anywhere you go,” Lombardi says.

VCast Mobile, which runs on MediaFlo’s network, costs $15 a month on top of phone charges. The Samsung phone is $149 with a two-year contract, after the $50 rebate. The LG phone is $199 with a two-year contract, after a $50 rebate.

Verizon Mobile TV was first announced in January with great fanfare at the Consumer Electronics Show. It was launched quietly earlier this month in 22 cities, including Las Vegas, Seattle, Dallas, Omaha, Jacksonville and Norfolk, Va.

Verizon added another market this week, Orlando, as it promotes the service at the CTIA Wireless industry trade show that began Tuesday.

MediaFlo isn’t the first TV service for cellphones. Oakland-based MobiTV has amassed 2 million paying subscribers since it was launched three years ago. It works with Sprint and Cingular phones.

Lombardi argues that her service offers a faster, more reliable picture and that switching between channels on the phone is akin to remote-control quality. There’s no delay.

“It’s the best-quality video I’ve ever seen on a cellphone,” says Cyriac Roeding, executive vice president of CBS’ mobile division, which is working with MediaFlo. “It’s a real breakthrough for wireless.”

In putting its ambitious network together, Qualcomm looked to an old technology: broadcasting via over-the-air UHF signals.

Active in the wireless industry since its earliest days, Qualcomm CEO Paul Jacobs says he and engineers used to fantasize about new uses for cellphones, dreaming that one day they could be used for mass broadcasting.

That became a reality when the Federal Communications Commission announced an auction for UHF properties, and he jumped. Overnight, “We had most of the country covered,” he says.

The company acquired the license for unused UHF channel 55 from the FCC and one private party for $38 million.

During testing on the system, Jacobs says, doubting colleagues said consumers would never stand for watching long-form video content on a phone with a small screen.

Jacobs says he was told: “People can’t walk around watching TV on a phone — they’ll trip.”

But he wasn’t swayed. “You get the best opportunities when everybody makes assumptions about your failure,” he says. “People don’t relate to TV on the phone differently than they relate to TV … because it’s still television — on the phone.”

As part of its VCast service, Verizon has offered clips from shows such as Fox’s 24. But Lombardi says the idea from the beginning was for MediaFlo to be simulcast TV with fuller programming.

“We wanted a network that everybody could see at the same time,” she says. “We felt that was a missing need.”

Verizon will begin marketing VCast Mobile TV in Verizon stores in coming weeks, says chief marketing officer Mike Lanman.

“This is mobile TV like they’ve never seen before,” he says. “It’s such a visible difference, the only way to get the message across is to show it to them.”

Verizon is still marketing VCast clips for music videos, sports and weather as an “on-demand” service. A monthly bundle with VCast Mobile TV and Internet access is $25 on top of phone charges.

A new chip

In addition to acquiring the UHF signals, Qualcomm invented a new kind of chip to pick up TV on cellphones. It licensed the chips to handset manufacturers Samsung and LG. Then it launched broadcast TV towers in major cities and signed Verizon as its first customer. Cingular will launch later this year.

Competitor MobiTV has been hampered by super-slow video signals. But CEO Phillip Alvelda says the service is just as speedy as MediaFlo when used on the newest, state-of-the-art cellphones. “Qualcomm has the luxury of working with two custom phones in 20 markets,” he says. “We’re in every market, on many, many phones.”

MobiTV has proved that customers will pay for TV programming on their cellphones. But Linda Barrabee, an analyst at researcher the Yankee Group, says that is still a tiny fraction of the overall wireless audience.

This year, she predicts growth to 6.6% of customers, from 2.4% last year and 0.7% in 2005.

“That’s a healthy jump,” she says. “But overall, while I think consumers would like to be entertained by their cellphone in their down time, the price is just too high right now for anyone beyond early adopters.”

Jacobs and Lombardi wave off such concerns.

“You can’t always be at home,” says Lombardi. “People love to watch TV, wherever they are, and will pay for the privilege.”

Sun

1. HP Photosmart A440 camera and Printer Dock series, printer is $130; package including printer and digital camera, $200 to $250 depending on camera model, available in April.

One thing that digital cameras offer is immediacy, but that’s often restricted to showing people their photos on the screen of the camera or passing on files in e-mail. But with a portable printer like that from HP you can not only take your camera to a party or outing, but you can also simultaneously print off 4×6 photos to hand out to guests for what HP says is a cost as low as 24 cents per print.

LG Kompressor vacuum cleaner, about $450 in Europe, not yet available in Canada.

There’s nothing like a vacuum cleaner that does something a little differently to get our hearts all aflutter. What the Kompressor does is (aw, you guessed) compress the dirt it takes in into little blocks so that they can be thrown away easily in the garbage. Sure, it’s not robotic and it won’t operate on its own but, heck (and we just have to repeat this) it compresses the dirt into little blocks. How neat is that?

2. Samsung MH80 hybrid hard drive, coming soon to a laptop near you.

If you’re looking for a way to get your laptop to boot faster or to resume working more quickly then the newly announced MH80 series of hard drives — in 80, 120 and 160 gigabyte capacities with 128 or 256 megabytes of flash memory — could be the answer. As well, the new drive also means, says Samsung, increased battery life and greater reliability, simply because the drive’s platter will be idle 99 per cent of the time, eliminating the need for the hard drive to spin constantly whenever the laptop is operating on battery power.

3. Weiser SmartKey Locks, various prices.

A lost key can be a worry, especially if it’s used to open the front door of your house. But now Weiser (www.weiserlock.ca) has come up with a solution to this by offering a new set of locks that allows you (if you have another copy of your key) to rekey the locks in seconds without having to call in a locksmith. As well, the locks are designed to eliminate the problem of “lock bumping” (we’re not going to describe it here because, hey, we’re responsible), a break-in technique now so well known on the Internet that sneaky kid down the street probably can do it.

© The Vancouver Sun 2007

 

USA Today

Apple TV hits stores this week. The elegantly simple device wirelessly connects music and video from your computer’s iTunes library to the big-screen TV in your den.

Leave it to Apple CEO Steve Jobs to get the job done (mostly) right. The highly anticipated device is a breeze to set up, though it takes awhile the first time you sync movies and other content off iTunes, and its storage capacity could be more generous.

Still, Apple TV looks even better when compared with efforts by other companies to lift digital content off the computer and onto the TV. Rival products tend to be complicated, cumbersome and costly.

At the core of Apple TV is the iTunes software so familiar to iPod users. Better yet, the sleek device lets you stream music and shows to your TV wirelessly over your home network.

From your TV, you can take in movies, TV shows, podcasts and music stored in iTunes on a PC or Mac. You can also display photos stored on your computer, including slide shows backed by a soundtrack.

Apple TV has a 40-gigabyte hard drive. Apple says that’s enough to store 50 hours of video, 9,000 songs, 25,000 photos or some combination. But I wish the capacity were even larger.

If 40 GB is too cramped for your own iTunes library, you can also stream video and audio (though not photos), from up to five additional computers on your network. You might think the USB port on the back of Apple TV would let you connect an external hard drive. It does not.

The content stored on the device is synchronized with iTunes. If you add newly downloaded movies or songs in iTunes on the computer, they automatically show up on Apple TV, wirelessly.

I watched A Bug’s Life, The Little Mermaid and episodes of The Office, among other fare. All looked nearly as good as they do on DVD, whether I was watching something stored on Apple TV or just streamed from iTunes. None of it was in high definition, though you can watch high-definition video via the device. Apple TV is capable of reaching the high-definition techie standard of 1080i, but not the even higher standard 1080p. Only tech enthusiasts will care. (Geeks also take note: Apple TV supports the H.264 and MPEG-4 video standards.)

Streamed stuff typically takes longer to start playing on your television compared with content stored on Apple TV. I encountered buffering delays watching some streamed content. Much depends on the reliability of your Wi-Fi.

I tested Apple TV with a new wireless AirPort Extreme Base Station from Apple (meeting state-of-the-art Wi-Fi standards). Apple said I might experience glitches with my older Linksys router.

Here’s a closer look at Apple TV:

The hardware: Apple TV does not resemble the electronics gear that currently lives next to your TV. That’s a good thing. The stylish gray 1.1-inch tall square box weighs just 2.4 pounds and is not much bigger than a paperback.

There’s no on-off button. Ports and connectors are on the back, including one for the HDMI (high-definition multimedia interface) cable I used, another for component video. Your TV must have one or the other. You can connect Apple TV directly to a TV or home theater receiver. Apple requires a modern widescreen TV set; video would look rotten on an older TV. High definition, of course, looks best.

Alas, it does not come with any of the cables that you need to set it up, which makes the $299 price less attractive than it appears. Apple sells HDMI cables for $20.

Controlling the action: A simple Apple remote is supplied. It’s the same remote control included with newer Macintosh computers. You use it to navigate Apple TV menus on the screen. After years of being conditioned around much larger (and complicated) TV remote controls, it was easy to misplace the diminutive Apple version.

The on-screen Apple TV interface has a familiar iPod feel. The main menu is segregated into movies, TV shows, music, podcasts, photos, settings and sources. Menus are decorated with movie posters, album covers and your own pictures. You can dig deeper into menu choices by clicking with the remote control. Once, though, I pressed the remote and nothing happened — Apple TV momentarily froze.

Managing content: The first time you sync iTunes to Apple TV can take an awful long time. You may want to do the heavy lifting overnight. You can sync wirelessly over your home Wi-Fi. But Apple TV also includes an ethernet port, still your fastest bet if such a network cable is handy.

I managed iTunes from the Mac in my basement office; Apple TV was connected to a Sony TV a floor above. You can sync all movies and TV shows, or choose a set number of recently unwatched films. You can also sync selected music playlists and photo albums.

Good as Apple TV is, I doubt folks will trade in DVD players anytime soon — iTunes films are purchased, after all, not rented. Apple TV can’t record like a TiVo. The iTunes movie roster is relatively thin. Except for movie trailers, Apple TV doesn’t do a lot of streaming (or let you download) directly from the Internet — for now, at least.

All that said, more people are downloading digital entertainment onto computers. Apple TV presents a dandy way to enjoy it from the couch rather than desk chair.

 

Realistic digital display expected to revolutionize one-armed bandits

Rachel Konrad
Sun

REDWOOD SHORES, Calif. — Engineers at PureDepth Inc. spent years developing tools for helping the military plot 3-D maps of war zones, eventually licensing top-secret technology to the U.S. Air Force and Navy.

But the Silicon Valley startup hit the jackpot in October when it inked a deal with International Game Technology Inc., the world’s largest maker of slot machines.

Industry experts say a realistic digital video display is the final hurdle that will completely digitize one-armed bandits. The new displays by PureDepth and others — set to debut later this year — could profoundly change the $85 billion US American gambling industry and how it’s regulated.

When high-tech slots are in place, programmers will be able to control nearly every aspect of the game — cost, payout, even the images that line up on the payline. Casino operators will be able to make changes in real time through back-end servers that talk to computer chips inside the slot machines.

“This is the last piece of the puzzle,” financial analyst Aimee Marcel Remey, who follows the gaming industry for Jefferies & Co. “These new systems are so different from the slots out there now. You feel like it’s an exact science, every time you pull.”

If the Beach Boys are playing the Luxor in Las Vegas, next-generation slots could display images of band members instead of cherries, numbers or other symbols. If band members’ faces line up, an embedded printer could spit out front-row tickets.

Or suppose the penny slots area at a tribal casino empties out around 7 p.m., when big spenders arrive. With a few keystrokes, programmers could change the minimum bet to $1 and offer a progressive jackpot with all slots in the house — or even with thousands of machines statewide.

“If the NASCAR folks are coming to Vegas, they could change the fruits to cars,” said Fred Angelopoulos, CEO of Redwood Shores-based PureDepth, founded in 1999. “You can start thinking outside the box, literally.”

Without digital displays and servers, employees would have to manually close out meters, change glass, change reel strips and physically relocate and remove machines.

Digital slots, however, are vulnerable to the same bugs and malfunctions that plague personal computers. Regulators say they’ll be seductive targets for hackers, who have been trying to rig games for decades.

In 2000, a Canadian computer programmer in Edmonton found a software glitch that let him regularly win $500 or more on some video poker machines. The maker of the machines — WMS Industries Inc. — estimated the incident cost at least $1 million US and sued the man, who threatened to publish the flaw online.

The Nevada Gaming Control Board, which sets the pace for regulators nationwide, adopted new rules last year for digital machines. The board must approve all software modifications — even pictures on reels. The approval process takes up to 30 days.

The board employs 11 experts in computer science, electronic security and wireless networking. It will double the number of these specialists by late 2007 and build a new research facility to deal with an expected profusion of digital slot machines, said Mark Clayton, who heads the board’s technology division.

Executives at the top three manufacturers acknowledge that networked slot machines are a seductive target for hackers and are reluctant to call them hack-proof for fear of inviting challenges from would-be invaders. Instead, they’re working with regulators to reduce the potential damage if such an attack occurred.

Roughly half the 835,000 slot machines nationwide have video displays and many are networked, but industry officials acknowledge that most are flops, lacking the visceral “clunk-clunk-clunk” of wheels hitting the payline.

Video slots with an authentic feel are the holy grail for manufacturers.

PureDepth searched for a mechanical alternative to the traditional optical tricks for fooling the eyes and brain into seeing depth. Such tricks — fancy versions of 3-D glasses — induced nausea and headaches and were rejected by casino operators, who stuck with mechanical reels or flat video displays with no depth.

With the cost of liquid crystal displays dropping, engineers at PureDepth’s lab in New Zealand decided to house two or more LCDs in one physical unit to create depth — a deceptively simple idea protected with 45 patents and roughly 70 patents pending.

Reno, Nev.-based IGT is hoping to debut the first machines with PureDepth’s multilayer video display in November at the Global Gaming Expo in Las Vegas. The company won’t say how much they’ll cost, but they’ll be more than mechanical reel machines, which cost up to $15,000.

A different approach on a 3-D video slot system will debut next month, when Waukegan, Ill.-based WMS is expected to introduce a “Monopoly Super Money Grab” slot machine. Its hybrid display features a mechanical reel behind a video display that activates when the payline hits certain combinations.

Traditional three- and five-reel slots have a finite number of combinations, but adding a video layer allows programmers to exponentially expand the possibilities. One thing that’s unlikely to change in the new era of digital slots: the slim odds of winning big.

© The Vancouver Sun 2007

Number of Internet threats to enterprise and consumer computers up 300 % since 2005

Gillian Shaw
Sun

The United States has become the Internet’s virtual shopping mall for stolen credit cards, home to more than half of the globe’s underground servers that are used in the identity theft trade.

That’s among the findings of Symantec’s Internet Security Report, released today, that puts the black-market price of a U.S.-based credit card with a card-verification number between $1 and $6 US, with the more lucrative full identity package — including a U.S. bank account, credit card, date of birth and government issued identification number — at the going rate of between $14 and $18 U.S.

And the chance of falling victim to cyber thieves is only increasing, with the number of Internet threats to enterprise and consumer computers up 300 per cent since 2005.

“We have seen overall an increase in malicious activity globally,” said Dean Turner, executive editor of the Symantec Internet Security Threat Report, an update on Internet security covering the six months ending Dec. 31, 2006. “It’s all about money, follow the money.

“It’s easy, there is a lot of money and the risk of getting caught is much lower than smashing a storefront window and grabbing something,” Turner said of the increase in data theft that is reaping windfall profits for techno-savvy and usually organized criminals.

The global nature of the Internet makes it difficult for police and security agencies to clamp down on the growing cyber crime. Even if perpetrators of the crimes are traced, Turner points out, “what are the chances of being dragged back to the country where the crime took place and being prosecuted?”

While an increasing number of home computers are being turned into bots (machines that let Internet fraudsters launch attacks and otherwise wreak online havoc while their owners remain unaware of their computers’ alter underground occupation), much of the recorded data theft and leakage comes from government, education and health organizations.

But Turner pointed out that that assessment could be skewed by the fact that businesses are not bound to disclose security breaches, so they could be underreported in the statistics. Canada has seen high profile examples of that, with one of the most recent the CIBC loss of a computer hard drive containing personal and financial information on fund account holders, a security gaffe that occurred some time before the victims of the lost identity data were notified.

Canada saw an increase of almost 144 per cent in bot-infected machines in the last half of 2006, with the country ranking tenth worldwide and accounting for two per cent of the world’s bot-infected computers.

Vancouver is tied with Montreal, each having nine per cent of Canada’s bot-infected computers, while Toronto has 21 per cent.

CYBER CRIME ON THE RISE

51%: Portion of the globe’s underground servers engaged in the identify theft business that are located in the United States.

300%: Increase in Internet threats to businesses and consumers since 2005.

144%: Increase in bot-infected machines in Canada in the last half of 2006.

3.64%: The average numbers of laptops the FBI has had lost or stolen every month between Feb. 2002 and Sept. 2005.

86%: Portion of credit and debit cards advertised for sale on underground economy servers that were issued by banks in the United States.

41%: Portion of Internet attacks in Canada that originate from the U.S.

Source: Symantec Internet Security Threat Report, for the six months ending Dec. 31, 2006

© The Vancouver Sun 2007