CELLPHONE ADD-ONS OVER THE TOP
      Wireless carriers are getting carried away with loading up their cellphones with new features --from instant messaging to music players -- and some consumers are crying "enough already!" A recent survey by Forrester Research indicates that only 8% of respondents ranked video and camera features as "important" when choosing their handset model, but cameras are now built-in on more than 80% of Motorola's new handsets. "There is a big gap between what operators think adds value and what customers really value," says a Capgemini analyst. A six-month study conducted by Capgemini and INSEAD, a French business school, revealed the disconnect: 77% of respondents from 27 European wireless carriers believed that advanced data services were a "key factor" in remaining competitive, but 73% of cellphone users felt just the opposite, labeling them "unimportant." Instead, users singled out price, network coverage, simplicity of offers and ease of paying as the critical factors in choosing a wireless service. (Wall Street Journal 29 Sep 2004)

OPA: Online Most Favored of All Media
By Robyn Greenspan

The Online Publishers Association (OPA), in conjunction with Frank N. Magid Associates, Inc., released their Generational Media Study today, finding the Internet has edged out TV as the medium of choice for 18 to 54-year-olds. Further, the Internet ranks highly across generations when compared to more traditional forms of media.

OPA president Michael Zimbalist called the study, the final report in a research series primarily focused on 18 to 34-year-olds, a "bookend on behavior and observations." 

Some 45 percent of the 1,235 survey participants indicate the Internet is their top choice for media, followed by TV at 35 percent. Trailing much further behind are books, radio, newspapers, videos/DVDs, video/computer games, and magazines.

"The Internet has become pervasive," said Zimbalist. "If you think about five years ago, it wouldn't be as easy as going into the park and getting Internet access. It's much different from going upstairs, booting up, dialing up."

An Internet preference becomes more pronounced as the study drills down into the generational breaks. Roughly half the youngest survey participants — 18 to 24-year-olds — cite the Internet as their top choice if they had to choose only two media for the rest of the lives; compared to 44 percent of 25 to 34-year-olds, and 43 percent of 35 to 54-year-olds.

On the other side of the media coin, television was the top choice for 39 percent of 35 to 54-year-olds, compared to 37 percent of 25 to 34-year-olds, and just 28 percent of 18 to 24-year-olds.

"You can see that across all generations, the Internet is the medium where they are all spending more time than a year ago," said Zimbalist, referring to the roughly 50 percent across the age groups who say they engaged in the activity more recently.

"About 80 percent of 18 to 24-year-olds regularly use the Internet, considerably higher than any other age group," noted Zimbalist, adding there are striking behavioral similarities across the ages.

The Internet outdistanced magazines for product and music information, but fell way behind TV for viewing video. "The one thing we think is interesting is the head-to-head comparison. The Internet is qualitatively as good at or better than other media," he said.

"Another key finding," Zimbalist added, "is the Internet has become so familiar, it is not a new medium anymore."

Survey participants said they would turn to the Internet first for information about products, hobbies and interests, music, gaming, and entertainment. "People are starting to look at the Internet as fun, not just a purposeful utility. It kind of holds true across the ages," Zimbalist noted.

However, participants report television is their primary source for news and entertainment, but Zimbalist said the norm is for consumers to move back and forth between media. For example, viewers see news on television, then look it up on the Web; or, they avoid waiting on long lines in stores to shop online.

These media usage observations recall findings from an April study the OPA conducted with Greystone Communications. That ethnographic study revealed 18 to 34 year-olds often use media in tandem with one another, alternating between foreground and background consumption.

While not part of the Generational Study, Zimbalist shared the Internet scored the lowest among the other forms of media in regard to attitudes about ads and whether they were noticed. "Advertisers are now paying more attention to the quality of their creative online. We see an uptake in rich media."

The study, based on a survey of 1,335 Internet users in the United States, finds that 76% of respondents experienced an increase in the deceptive E-mail practices known as phishing and spoofing. Perhaps more alarming, 70% report having unintentionally visited a spoofed Web site, and more than 15% admit revealing sensitive personal information in the process. Two percent claim to have experienced direct monetary loss because of phishers.

According to a July report from the Anti-Phishing Working Group, phishers are able to convince up to 5% of recipients to respond to them. That month, the group reported there were 1,974 new phishing attacks, representing a 39% increase over the previous month.

In April, research firm Gartner estimated that 57 million Americans had received phishing E-mail. Of those, it found that 1.8 million, or approximately 3%, revealed personal information, and more than half of those experienced identity theft as a result. Gartner put the annual cost to banks at $1.2 billion. 

28% of U.S. Adults Continue to Inaccurately Identify Phishing Email Scams

MailFrontier™, a pioneer in email security and leading provider of anti-spam solutions, today announced the results of an independent national survey:  28% of U.S. adults today inaccurately identify phishing emails.  Also revealed in the study was the surprising finding that consumers are still easily fooled by some of the earliest, most unsophisticated phishing scams.  For example, the survey included a highly publicized PayPal phishing email which was identified inaccurately as legitimate by 31% of respondents. The findings generate concern over the level of consumer and business email users’ awareness to this growing email threat.  It only takes one response to a phishing email for an individual to give away access to their personal finances or access to a corporation’s most confidential financial, employee and intellectual property information.

Until it started hurting his social life.

And his grades.

The 16-year-old has spent the last year coping with a video game addiction, in this case to the military role-playing game Socom II.

"I probably noticed a problem about a month into playing Socom," Perkins says. "There's something about it -- I kept wanting to go back."

Jaysen's mother, Rebecca, also noticed the change in her son.

"Jaysen would get up to play in the middle of the night," she says. "I guess the behavior was addictive -- he was trying to play it any way he could."

So the Perkinses turned to Jaysen's therapist, Kim McDaniel, for help.

McDaniel, a licensed mental health counselor, treats Jaysen along with about eight others each week for problems related to gaming addiction at her private practice in Kirkland, Wash.

Her most common patients are 6-year-olds who've had trouble adjusting to other children in school and 12-year-olds who are struggling with the transition to middle school. She also helps adolescents like Jaysen. When parents bring these distressed children to McDaniel, she frequently discovers a connection to gaming.

"I often find that parents have nothing but the best intent with their children's relationship to technology," McDaniel says, "but there are a lot of myths out there."

One myth might be that video games are engrossing but not addictive.

"This is an exciting form of technology that kids really, really like," says David Walsh of the Minneapolis-based National Institute on Media and the Family. "As a psychologist, I understand why it's so engaging. It's Psych 101 -- stimulus and response."

And it goes beyond that.

Certainly, popular games such as the Grand Theft Auto series and online games like Socom II and EverQuest -- where multiple players can compete over the Internet -- are designed to engage the player, but what actually makes them addictive?

McDaniel points to what video game manufacturers call "the God effect."

"You're the center of the universe" in more addictive role-playing games, McDaniel says. "Which is very attractive for teenagers without a lot of power, psychologically, in the world."

Parents can discern between misuse and addiction if they notice two important telltale signs in their children: withdrawal and isolation.

"If you're a parent and your child is withdrawing, you might wonder if your kid is getting into pot or cocaine," says Hilarie Cash of Internet/Computer Addiction Services in Redmond, Wash. "The symptoms are very similar."

Cash and McDaniel are working on a parents' guide to gaming addiction in which they outline the symptoms to look for in young gamers -- something parents can prevent, they say, by regulating their children's gaming time.

"It's important to have the ground rules and the consequences clear from the get-go," says Walsh. "The time to discuss this is not when you're trying to impose the limits" after things have gotten out of control.

The video game industry agrees that the onus is on parents to monitor their children's playing time.

"Parents who supervise their children need to make sure that [video games] are used appropriately," says Carolyn Rauch, senior vice president of the Entertainment Software Association, the trade group that represents U.S. computer and video game publishers.

But gaming addiction isn't limited to children.

According to Maressa Orzack of Computer Addiction Services, located near Boston, adult gaming addicts "have other issues like depression. . . . These people are avoiding their own problems. Some of them want excitement, some of them want relief."

Orzack also believes the population of adult gaming addicts in the United States could be significantly high, though exact figures are difficult to ascertain. (The study of gaming and its effect on players is a specialized and still-developing field.)

Liz Woolley didn't wait around for more studies to emerge on the issue. She founded Online Gamers Anonymous in 2002, after losing her son, Shawn, to suicide that same year. He had become addicted to EverQuest while being treated for depression.

Devastated and angry, Woolley didn't know where to turn.

"I found out that [gaming addiction] is an underground epidemic," Woolley says. "A lot of people were going through the same thing, and there was no place to go for help."

So Woolley turned to Alcoholics Anonymous and adopted its 12-step program. "That was the best support group that I knew, with a success rate," she says.

Now, according to Woolley, the group's Web site, www.olganon.org, gets more than 300 visits a week.

"We want people to know that they're not alone," she says. "This can be a life-threatening addiction and it should be taken seriously."

When it comes to younger gamers, Kim McDaniel recommends traditional group therapy.

"For children under 10, social skills groups are an excellent resource," she says. "For adolescents, getting into a peer counseling group could be extremely helpful."

Jaysen Perkins hasn't joined traditional group therapy, but he has benefited from joining a group -- he's been attending a church youth group with friends and reclaiming old hobbies.

"I used to be heavy into basketball," he says of his days before Socom. "Now I've been playing basketball again, I've been going to high school football games. I've been going to that youth group with friends. . . . We're trying to keep my schedule busy."

GOOGLE'S PC SEARCH TOOL MIGHT PROVE THE 'PERFECT SPY'

      Google Desktop Search, released last Thursday in a "beta" test phase, may prove a boon to disorganized PC users who need assistance in finding data on their computers, but it also has a downside for those who use public or workplace computers. Its indexing function may compromise the privacy of users who share computers for such tasks as processing e-mail, online shopping, medical research, banking or any activity that requires a password. "It's clearly a very powerful tool for locating information on the computer," says one privacy consultant. "On the flip side of things, it's a perfect spy program." The program, which is currently available only for Windows PCs, automatically records any e-mail read through Outlook, Outlook Express or the Internet Explorer browser, and also saves pages viewed through IE and conversations conducted via AOL Instant Messenger. In addition, it finds Word, Excel and PowerPoint files stored on the computer.

And unlike the built-in cache of recent Web sites visited that's included in most browser histories, Google's index is permanent, although individuals can delete items individually. Acknowledging potential privacy concerns, a Google executive says managers of shared computers should think twice about installing the tool before advanced features like password protection and multi-user support are available. (AP/Washington Post 19 Oct 2004)

EACH PRINTER CARRIES UNIQUE SIGNATURE

It turns out that every printer leaves a unique "intrinsic signature"

on all the documents it produces, enabling law enforcement officials to track down printers used to make bogus bank notes, fake passports or other important documents. In a test, a research team from Purdue University was able to identify the correct printer more than 90% of the time. The signature derives from the way different printers lay down ink in distinct bands that can be spotted by image processing software. "We extract mathematical features, or measurements, from printed letters, then we use image analysis and pattern-recognition techniques to identify the printer,"

says Purdue professor Edward Delp. The research has been focused on identifying laserjet signatures, but the researchers are now turning their attention to inkjet printers as well. (BBC News 18 Oct 2004) http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/3753886.stm

TV-B-GONE ZAPS INTRUSIVE BROADCASTS

     Inventor Mitch Altman has the answer for people in airports, doctors'

Altman says friends who've heard about the device have approached him about other uses, such as one that could jam cell phones or shut down vehicle subwoofers and car alarms. (Wired.com 19 Oct 2004) http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,65392,00.html

WHAT WOMEN WANT (IN GAME DESIGN)

THE ROBOTS ARE COMING! THE ROBOTS ARE COMING!

      This week the Santa Clara Convention Center will be overrun by a host of swiveling, beeping, rolling attendees at RoboNexus, the first exhibit of its kind in the U.S. According to Dan Kara, editorial director of Robotic Trends, which organized the conference, the robotics industry is poised to move out of academia and into the commercial mainstream. Heartened by the success of iRobot's Roomba vacuum cleaner, a number of startups are beginning to address the nascent market with a variety of components aimed at making robot-building easier. "A number of building blocks are already in place for this industry to take off," says Alec Hudnut, president of Evolution Robotics. "You have low-cost processing power, memory, low-cost assembly. You have some infrastructure in place." Hudnut says what the industry needs now are standard core components, or sub-assembly parts, so companies can stop reinventing the wheel. His company is helping out with a product that turns a digital camera into a smart camera, which could be used at a grocery store checkout counter to ensure the checker scans all the items in the shopper's cart. The same system is used by Sony for its Aibo robotic dog. Meanwhile, RoboDynamics has build a robotic platform called MILO that can be customized to create robots for home security or home health care monitoring and Box Robotics is introducing its 912 robot platform that would provide a basis for hobbyists to build their own robotic companions. But don't get your hopes up too soon -- "We are probably 50 years away from a Jetsons-like humanoid robot in your kitchen washing your dishes," says RoboDynamics CEO Fred Nikgohar. "It took the Japanese 35 years to create a robot that walks on two legs." (San Jose Mercury News 18 Oct 2004) http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/9948250.htm

NUMBER OF DOMESTIC ROBOTS TO INCREASE SEVEN-FOLD
    The U.N.'s annual World Robotics Survey predicts that the use of robots for such domestic chores as mowing lawns and vacuuming floors will surge sevenfold by 2007, as the result of steadily dropping prices. Sales of window-washing and pool-cleaning robots are also set to take off. Colin Angle of iRobot says, "We are just at a point where robots are becoming affordable... and some of them can actually do real work." The World Robotics Survey predicts that by the end of this decade robots will "also assist old and handicapped people with sophisticated interactive equipment, carry out surgery, inspect pipes and sites that are hazardous to people, fight fire and bombs." (AP 22 Oct 2004)
http://apnews.excite.com/article/20041022/D85S6N380.html

BRIDGING THE DISTANCE IN DISTANCE LEARNING
      Although many educators will argue that there's no good substitute for face-to-face contact to monitor students' attention level, several technological solutions are available to help teachers gauge whether learners are learning. WebEx recently debuted an "attention indicator" that tells the teacher whether the WebEx window is in the foreground on the client's PC screen. And LearnLinc offers a glimpse feature that enables the teacher not only to see, but to capture an image of the student's desktop.
However, most instructors will agree that just because a student is multitasking, mindlessly clicking through a solitaire game, does not mean he or she is not listening -- studies have shown that most people are adept at distinguishing items of particular importance in audio streams and will snap to attention when there is useful and pertinent information offered. Meanwhile, it's just as important that the student be aware of the teacher's attention in order to generate the positive feedback most of us take for granted in F2F interactions. Unfortunately, there's "no analogue to this kind of multimodal conversation in online learning," say authors Lisa Neal and Michael Feldstein. "It may turn out that… the best way to compensate for a loss of capability on the instructor's side is to increase empowerment on the learner's side," providing them the tools, such as biofeedback mechanisms, to monitor their own attention levels. Building on safety systems developed by automobile companies that set off an alarm if the driver starts to drift into another lane or fails to brake when the car ahead decelerates, educators may adapt the technology to give students a "wake-up call" when their attention wanders. (eLearn Magazine Oct 2004)
http://www.elearnmag.org/

ADVERTISERS TRACK RADIO LISTENING HABITS
      In 14 locations around the Washington area, a company called MobilTrak has installed sensing devices on utility poles that pick up the electronic signals from cars' antennas as they speed by and record which station they're listening to. The monitoring process gives businesses a welcome insight into the listening habits of their target audience and helps them decide how to allocate their advertising budget, says MobilTrak managing partner C. David Boice: "It's all about precision marketing. It's about giving marketers real-time data about what's happening in certain areas at certain times so they don't waste their advertising dollars." The most enthusiastic adopters have been car dealerships, who generally believe that 80% of their business comes from people who live or work within 10 miles of their location. One dealer found that the two stations he'd been investing in -- a talk-personality station and a contemporary music station -- didn't even rank in the top 10 for in-car radio listeners driving by his dealership. "It was a real eye-opener," he says. Currently, MobilTrak picks up only FM signals, but the company says it plans to introduce technology that picks up AM and satellite station signals next spring. (Washington Post 25 Oct 2004)  

VIDEO GAMES FOR THE VERY YOUNG

CRIME-FIGHTING IN THE 21st CENTURY     
Law enforcement officials have charged a Uniontown, Pennsylvania man of killing a hunter seven years ago and stealing a dear the hunter had shot. The killer's only mistake was to take the deer and put it in his freezer. "They're claiming that I shot him and took his deer," the man told his wife in disbelief. He insists that he is innocent. Police searched the man's house in March 1998 and took venison from his freezer, which they matched it with deer entrails found near the victim's body and deer blood on his hunting pants. Investigators believe it's the first homicide case involving deer DNA. (AP/USA TODAY 29 Oct 2004) http://www.usatoday.com/tech/science/genetics/2004-10-29-deer-dna_x.htm  

Active Internet Users By Country September 2004

By Sean Michael Kerner | October 29, 2004

The overall at-home global active Internet universe for 12 selected countries nudged up incrementally by 1.34 percent from August 2004 to September 2004, Nielsen//NetRatings found. The increase represents almost 4 million new active users for the month.

The biggest percentage gainer in September was Spain (13.82 percent) with just over 1 million additional active users. Italy reversed of last month's trend when it lost the most active uses, by posting the highest numerical gain in September, with almost 1.7 million active users added (an 11.33 percent increase).

The largest decliner on a percentile basis was Hong Kong, which lost 7.11 percent (just over 190,000 users). The U.S posted the largest numerical user decline, just over 1.6 million (a 1.18 percent drop). The fall in US active users returns the country to a losing streak posted from April through July of this year.

CHINA CLOSES INTERNET CAFES

     China has shut down 1,600 Internet cafes and fined operators a total of

By RACHEL KONRAD, AP Technology Writer

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. - Voters nationwide reported some 1,100 problems with electronic voting machines on Tuesday, including trouble choosing their intended candidates.

The e-voting glitches reported to the Election Protection Coalition, an umbrella group of volunteer poll monitors that set up a telephone hotline, included malfunctions blamed on everything from power outages to incompetent poll workers.

But there were also several dozen voters in six states — particularly Democrats in Florida — who said the wrong candidates appeared on their touch-screen machine's checkout screen, the coalition said.

In many cases, voters said they intended to select John Kerry but when the computer asked them to verify the choice it showed them instead opting for President Bush the group said.

Ralph G. Neas, president of People for the American Way Foundation, which helped form the coalition, called the summary screen problem "troubling but anecdotal."

He and other voting rights advocates said the disproportionate number of Democrats reporting such problems was probably due to higher awareness of voter protection coalitions.

"Overall, the problems of outright voter intimidation and suppression have not been as great as in the past," Neas said.

But the reports did highlight computer scientists' concerns about touch screens, which they say are prone to tampering and unreliable unless they produce paper records for recounts.

Roberta Harvey, 57, of Clearwater, Fla., said she had tried at least a half dozen times to select Kerry-Edwards when she voted Tuesday at Northwood Presbyterian Church.

After 10 minutes trying to change her selection, the Pinellas County resident said she called a poll worker and got a wet-wipe napkin to clean the touch screen as well as a pencil so she could use its eraser-end instead of her finger. Harvey said it took about 10 attempts to select Kerry before and a summary screen confirmed her intended selection.

Election officials in several Florida counties where voters complained about such problems did not return calls Tuesday night.

A spokesoman for the company that makes the touch-screen machines used in Pinellas, Palm Beach and two other Florida counties, Alfie Charles of Sequoia Voting Systems Inc., said the machines' monitors may need to be recalibrated periodically.

The most likely reason the summary screen showed wrong candidates was because voters pushed the wrong part of the touch screen in the first place, Charles said.

He said poll workers are trained to perform the recalibration whenever a voter says the touch screen isn't sensitive enough.

"Voters will vote quickly and they'll notice that they made an error when they get to the review screen. The review screen is doing exactly what it needs to do — notifying voters what selections are about to be recorded," Charles said. "On a paper ballot, you don't get a second chance to make sure you voted for whom you intended, and it's a strong point in favor of these machines."

The Election Protection Coalition received a total of 32 reports of touch-screen voters who selected one candidate only to have another show up on the summary screen, Cindy Cohn, legal director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a coalition member.

David Dill, a Stanford University computer scientist whose Verified Voting Foundation also belongs to the coalition, said he wouldn't "prejudge and say the election is going smoothly just because we have a small number of incident reports out of the total population.

"It's not going to be until the dust clears probably tomorrow that we have even an approximate idea of what happened," Dill added.

By MATTHEW BARAKAT, Associated Press Writer

LEESBURG, Va. - A brother and sister who sent unsolicited junk e-mail to millions of America Online customers were convicted Wednesday in the nation's first felony prosecution of distributors of spam.

After returning their verdict, jurors immediately began deliberating punishments for Jeremy D. Jaynes, 30, and Jessica DeGroot, 28, both of the Raleigh, N.C., area. Each could receive jail terms for fraudulently sending junk mail.

A third defendant, Richard Rutkowski, was acquitted. Jurors deliberated for a day and a half.

Prosecutors compared Jaynes and DeGroot to modern-day snake-oil salesmen who used the Internet to peddle junk like a "FedEx refund processor" that supposedly allowed people to earn $75 an hour while working from home.

In one month alone, Jaynes received 10,000 credit card orders, each for $39.95, for the processor.

"This was just a case of fraud," said state prosecutor Samuel E. Fishel IV. "This is a snake-oil salesman in a new format."

Prosecutors asked the jury to impose a maximum sentence of 15 years in prison for Jaynes, and to consider an unspecified prison term for his sister.

Defense lawyers asked jurors to spare the defendants prison terms.

David Oblon, representing Jaynes, argued that it was inappropriate for prosecutors to seek what he called an excessive punishment, given that this is the first prosecution under the Virginia law. He also noted that his client, a North Carolina resident, would have been unaware of the Virginia law.

Loudoun County Circuit Court Judge Thomas Orne has not yet ruled on an earlier motion asking that the case be dismissed. He said during the trial that he had a hard time allowing the prosecution of DeGroot and Rutkowski to go forward to the jury.

The case against Rutkowski was the weakest, said his attorney Leo Andrews Jr., "and I would think the commonwealth would agree about that as well."

Virginia prosecuted the case under a law that took effect last year that bars people from sending bulk e-mail that is unsolicited and masks its origin. AOL, which is a unit of New York-based Time Warner Inc., is based in Dulles, Va.

Attorney General Jerry W. Kilgore called Virginia's anti-spam law the toughest in America.

"Spam is a nuisance to millions of Americans, but it is also a major problem for businesses large and small because the thousands of unwanted e-mails create havoc as they attempt to conduct business," Kilgore said in a statement.

U.S. Online Travel Market to Soar
By Rob McGann
November 10, 2004

U.S. online travel sales are projected to reach a year-end total of $54 billion in 2004, comprising just under a quarter (23 percent) of all domestic travel sales, according to the latest market forecast by JupiterResearch. That figure marks a 20 percent year-over-year increase above the 2003 total.

According to Jupiter's report, which tracks sales by major direct distributors and third parties, robust growth is predicted to continue through 2009, reaching a total of $91 billion, or 33 percent of all travel purchased.

TELECOMMUTING TAKES OFF AT TECH FIRMS      

Thanks to better technology, such as collaborative software applications, a number of technology firms are giving more workers flexibility in how -- and where -- they do their jobs. When set up properly, telecommuting and flextime are good for both employers and workers, says Ellen Galinsky, president of the Families and Work Institute: "Providing flexibility isn't a perk. Flexible work (options) are part of effective companies." In fact, studies on telecommuting show that it increases workers' average productivity by 5% to 20%, says Jack Nilles, president of telecommuting consulting firm JALA International. "Most offices are dysfunctional. Interruptions are unbelievable," says Nilles, who adds that the number of people who work at least one day every couple of weeks away from the office is about 30 million this year, up 10% from last year. IBM is a case in point: In 2001, about a third of IBM employees worked outside the office at least some of the time. That figure has climbed to 42%, says Maria Ferris, manager of work/life and women's initiatives at Big Blue. Still, there are challenges to overcome: Top on the list is ensuring that company data isn't at risk when employees work from home, followed by convincing managers to supervise based on results rather than face-time, and ensuring that remote employees feel connected. (CNet News.com 15 Nov 2004)

HEAVY COMPUTER USE LINKED TO GLAUCOMA      

Researchers at the Toho University School of Medicine in Tokyo have found that long hours spent in front of a computer screen may increase the risk of glaucoma in near-sighted people. Glaucoma, which is caused by damage to the optic nerve, results in blind spots or visual impairments that can lead to blindness. The research is based on a study of 10,000 workers in Japan who were tested for the disease, with results correlated to data on how many hours were spent on the computer and also pre-existing visual problems, such as myopia. Scientists said they believe the optic nerve in myopic people might be more vulnerable to computer-caused stress than in normal eyes. "Computer stress is reaching higher levels than have ever been experienced before. In the next decade, therefore, it might be important for public health professionals to show more concern about myopia and visual field abnormalities in heavy computer users," says the report published in the British Journal of Ophthalmology. (Reuters/MSNBC 16 Nov 2004) http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6493299

Inventor Rejoices as TVs Go Dark 

Story location: http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,65392,00.html

02:00 AM Oct. 19, 2004 PT

Sanders Li's paper plate held nothing but a crumpled napkin. His meal finished, he lingered. His unblinking eyes gazed at Sex and the City on a 15-inch color TV over the counter at Nizario's Pizza on 18th Street in San Francisco's Castro neighborhood Sunday evening. In the middle of a scene, the TV turned off.  For 10 seconds, Li kept looking, waiting, not blinking through his glasses. At last, he left his stool, trashed his plate and emerged into the cool autumn night.

Leaving, he passed 48-year-old Mitch Altman, who was twiddling a matte-black plastic fob on his key chain. Altman's blue and purple hair reflected the pizza shop's neon, and he was smiling excitedly.

"We just saved him several minutes of his life," he said.

Li agreed. He said he didn't care that the TV was gone, even though he had been watching the show.

Altman's key-chain fob was a TV-B-Gone, a new universal remote that turns off almost any television. The device, which looks like an automobile remote, has just one button. When activated, it spends over a minute flashing out 209 different codes to turn off televisions, the most popular brands first.

For Altman, founder of Silicon Valley data-storage maker 3ware, the TV-B-Gone is all about freeing people from the attention-sapping hold of omnipresent television programming. The device is also providing hours of entertainment for its inventor.

At a Laundromat and cafe down the street, a lone man sorted clothes in the glow of larger-than-life bikini babes on a 60-inch Sony HDTV. A punch of the button and the screen instantly went dark. He went on folding his T-shirts, seemingly unaware of the change.

"It's always like that," Altman said. "It's so much part of the environment in the U.S. that people don't even notice when it disappears."

It is different in Hong Kong, Altman said. There, when he clicked off store TVs, everyone looked around to see who did it.

At Best Buy, neither customers nor staff responded as one set after another turned off -- Sony TVs first, then a JVC and an Apex, all from a single click. The interview was easier without competition from Pirates of the Caribbean.

Improved conversation was the motivation behind TV-B-Gone, and it's why Altman calls it the most helpful tool he's worked on. He said it compares well to the Apple video game he wrote in 1977 (which became a military training module), virtual-reality systems he helped build at VPL in 1986 (used for military research despite his and the company's explicit pacifist policies), and the hard-drive controllers he patented after starting up 3ware.

Since he left 3ware, he has spent most of his time finishing up TV-B-Gone. His equity from that firm provided the capital for the first run of 20,000 remotes.

"I was always squandering my time, energy and creativity on something that was at best benign," he said, in the suddenly quiet aisle at Best Buy. "I was always trying to get people to do something good. Some people do something for the disabled or something. But that's not really my thing, so I did this."

The idea for TV-B-Gone was born at a restaurant in the early 1990s, when Altman and his friends kept paying attention to a TV in the corner, not to one another. They chatted about how to turn off all televisions, and he wondered if it would be possible to string together a series of "power" commands.

After that, the project would have disappeared, but Altman's friends wanted the tools. He said about 50 people volunteered to help design, package and even name the TV-B-Gone. Cartoonist Nina Paley, he said, has begged for over a decade to work on the packaging.

The devices don't always work. At a pizza restaurant, a giant Samsung HDTV turned off only after a couple of tries. After a kitchen worker turned it back on, TV-B-Gone had become impotent against the blaring football game. Altman said manufacturers periodically add new codes, though he said he had never seen the device work once and then lose its effect.

Altman said he prefers to ask people to turn off TVs. The problem is places where there's a captive audience and no one is available to respond to requests, like the Laundromat or the airport. Altman said he has turned off sets at his local laundries and at airports around the Pacific Rim.

The European model, which uses different codes from the American-Asian one, was field-tested at EuroDisney, where anti-TV activist and computer programmer David Burke was waiting with his 6-year-old daughter to get on a ride called Honey I Shrunk the Kids. A wall of TVs in the waiting room showed a loop of constant Kodak ads. Burke had prototypes in his bag and made a bank of screens go off with one click.

"It fills you with naughty laughter to know you did this and other people have no idea what happened," Burke said. People around him noticed that the screens had turned off, but no one raised a fuss.

Responding to the accusation that it sounded like unaccountable power, Burke said, "You've heard about the battle for eyeballs. They're your eyeballs. You should not have your consciousness constantly invaded. Television people are getting better and better at finding ways of roping us into TV where we can't get away."

With the spread of TiVo and downloadable movies, he said, the traditional 30-second spot is dying. Now, advertisers want waiting rooms, elevators and urinals -- and they don't want anyone to be able to turn the screens off.

Representatives from Channel One and CNN's airport and waiting room networks could not be reached for comment by press time.

Altman said people who hear about TV-B-Gone start thinking about other nuisances. Friends have asked for ways to jam cell phones, shut down vehicle subwoofers and kill car alarms.

Standing on the corner of 18th and Castro, watching people staring past their beers in bars, spacing out behind the wheel at red lights and ignoring one another on the bus, it was clear that it would take more than a gadget to snap people entirely back to reality.

"What I really want," Altman said, "Is Life-B-Here."

TV-B-Gone can lead to awkward interactions. At the hipster video rental shop a clerk was watching the Yankees play the Red Sox. She faced the screen, glancing away only momentarily to help a customer as she waited for the ads to end and the ninth inning to begin. When the screen turned off, she said, "You'd better turn that back on." She said she'd like a universal remote that could change the channel at the gym, but didn't understand why anyone would want to turn a set off entirely. "I love my TV," she said.

Her co-worker, shelving DVDs in the corner, saw the key chain. A sly smile crept through his goatee. "You got any more of those?" he asked.

At Fenway Park, Derek Jeter warmed up to lead off the ninth. The TV-lover had an angry set in her jaw. And TV-B-Gone served its less-publicized purpose -- it also turns on any TV.

TiVo Users to Still See Many Ads

NEW YORK (Reuters) – TiVo, maker of digital television video recorders, will next year add ways for viewers to see advertising and corporate logos even as they try to skip commercials, the company said on Wednesday.

Starting in March, most viewers who fast-forward through programs on their TiVo digital video recorder (DVR) -- a set-top box that saves shows on a built-in computer hard drive -- will see small pop-up billboards or logos related to the brands represented in some of the ads.

TiVo said it worked with more than 30 of the biggest U.S. advertisers, including auto manufacturers and Hollywood studios, in a strategic move to bolster its tiny ad unit, which generates only a fraction of the company's revenue.

TiVo spokeswoman Kathryn Kelly said the move, which will allow advertisers a chance to offer viewers contest entries and giveaways, will not affect consumers' ability to fast-forward through commercials.

"It is just another way for advertisers to show their brands in a less intrusive way than traditional advertising," she said.

Subscribers, who pay up to $13 a month for the full TiVo service, will see the change automatically through a software upgrade. Later in 2005, TiVo hopes to launch a system that lets viewers buy merchandise and take part in surveys using the buttons on their remote controls, Kelly said.

However, subscribers who receive the TiVo service via satellite provider DirecTV Group Inc. TiVo's biggest source of new customers, are not expected to see a change in their service. Unlike so-called "standalone" TiVo subscribers, who buy their boxes in retail stores, DirecTV chooses which set-top boxes and services are funneled to its users.

"DirecTV doesn't always roll out all the features that we offer," she said.

TIVO AT CROSSROADS

The advertising plans come as TiVo hits a crossroads. It has swelled to 2 million subscribers, but U.S. cable companies are starting to offer similar services at cheaper prices. Moreover, DirecTV -- controlled by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. -- has hinted that its future may not include TiVo.

TiVo seeks to drive retail sales with enhanced features and services and boost revenue from other sources, such as advertising and audience measurement, which tracks the viewing behavior of its users.

In the past, advertisers and TV networks viewed DVRs as a threat, arguing that some devices' commercial skipping features violate copyright laws and rob them of revenues.

But DVRs are becoming a mainstream product and TiVo, which counts entertainment giants NBC, the General Electric Co. unit, and Time Warner Inc. as stakeholders, has generally chosen to partner with advertisers.

EchoStar Communications Corp.'s Dish Network, a DirecTV rival, said it does not plan to change the ad-skipping features of its DVR set-top boxes.

"We don't have any of the pop-up features that TiVo says they want to include," said spokesman Marc Lumpkin.

Texas Officials Wary of Plan to Hunt by Internet

By Jeff Franks

HOUSTON (Reuters) - Hunters soon may be able to sit at their computers and blast away at animals on a Texas ranch via the Internet, a prospect that has state wildlife officials up in arms.

A controversial Web site, http://www.live-shot.com, already offers target practice with a .22 caliber rifle and could soon let hunters shoot at deer, antelope and wild pigs, site creator John Underwood said on Tuesday.

Texas officials are not quite sure what to make of Underwood's Web site, but may tweak existing laws to make sure Internet hunting does not get out of hand.

"This is the first one I've seen," said Texas Parks and Wildlife Department wildlife director Mike Berger. "The current state statutes don't cover this sort of thing."

Underwood, an estimator for a San Antonio, Texas auto body shop, has invested $10,000 to build a platform for a rifle and camera that can be remotely aimed on his 330-acre (133-hectare) southwest Texas ranch by anyone on the Internet anywhere in the world.

The idea came last year while viewing another Web site on which cameras posted in the wild are used to snap photos of animals.

"We were looking at a beautiful white-tail buck and my friend said 'If you just had a gun for that.' A little light bulb went off in my head," he said.

Internet hunting could be popular with disabled hunters unable to get out in the woods or distant hunters who cannot afford a trip to Texas, Underwood said.

Berger said state law only covers "regulated animals" such as native deer and birds and cannot prevent Underwood from offering Internet hunts of "unregulated" animals such as non-native deer that many ranchers have imported and wild pigs.

He has proposed a rule that will come up for public discussion in January that anyone hunting animals covered by state law must be physically on site when they shoot.

Berger expressed reservations about remote control hunting, but noted that humans have always adopted new technologies to hunt.

"First it was rocks and clubs, then we sharpened it and put it on a stick. Then there was the bow and arrow, black powder, smokeless power and optics," Berger said. "Maybe this is the next technological step out there."

Underwood, 39, said he will offer animal hunting as soon as he gets a fast Internet connection to his remote ranch that will enable hunters to aim the rifle quickly at passing animals.

He said an attendant would retrieve shot animals for the shooters, who could have the heads preserved by a taxidermist. They could also have the meat processed and shipped home, or donated to animal orphanages.

Clear Pictures of How We Think 

By Rowan Hooper

Story location: http://www.wired.com/news/medtech/0,1286,65775,00.html

02:00 AM Nov. 20, 2004 PT

We've all had recourse to say: "My head tells me to do one thing, but my heart says do the other." Sometimes we are forced to make a decision but we feel ourselves to be pulled in opposite directions by reason and emotion.

Thanks to an innovation that has transformed the study of the mind, scientists are now able to see precisely what happens in the brain in situations like this. For the first time in history we are getting close to answering the question of whether the heart rules the head.

magnetic-resonance imaging, or fMRI.

This technique allows the measurement of the level of oxygen in the blood, and tells scientists which parts of the brain are most active. It can show, for example, the parts of the brain that operate when we fall in love and when we have food cravings. It has even recently revealed the differences in the brains of Democrats and Republicans.

But the technique also holds out the promise of answering deep questions about our most cherished human characteristics. For example, do we have an inbuilt moral sense, or do we learn what is right and wrong as we grow up? And which is stronger: emotions or logic?

Before fMRI, information about the parts of the brain involved in different tasks could only be gathered by studying people who had suffered brain damage from trauma or stroke, and seeing how their brain function changed. Now, the brains of healthy people can be scanned as they are given different tasks.

"fMRI has provided striking evidence in favor of some theories and against others," said Joshua Greene, of Princeton University's Department of Psychology. "But I don't think the real payoff has hit yet. That will come when we have successful computational theories of complex decision-making, ones that describe decision-making at the level of neural circuits."

Greene, together with Jonathan Cohen, professor of psychology at Princeton, is using fMRI to look at the factors that influence moral judgment.

To do so, the researchers scan the brains of volunteers while posing them fiendishly tricky dilemmas. For example, imagine you and your neighbors are hiding in a cellar from marauding enemy soldiers. Your baby starts to cry. If he continues, the soldiers will discover your hiding place and kill you all. The only way to save yourself and the others is to silence your baby -- by smothering him to death. What do you do?

Clearly, you would feel intense emotions, and this shows on the brain scan. But you would also be forced to make a logical assessment of the situation, and this shows up on the brain scan too. Areas involved in abstract reasoning and those that process emotions light up.

In other words, when processing a difficult and personal moral dilemma, we really are of two minds. Greene found that if the dilemma is not so personal, the reasoning part of the brain is dominant.

When a dispute exists between two sides, say in a court of law or in a territorial land claim, there is often a mediator. So too, it seems, the brain has one too. Researchers found a region called the anterior cingulate cortex, believed to be involved in mediating conflict, was highly active in brains struggling with the crying baby scenario.

Greene and colleagues showed a neurological basis for the phrase "of two minds," and that both compete for dominance. So does the heart rule the head? Answer: Sometimes. But the head doesn't give in without a fight.

And we can use fMRI to go further, and examine how we got to be the way we are. Belgian professor Guy Orban, head of the division of neurophysiology at Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, uses fMRI to tackle evolutionary questions about the brain. His experimental subjects look at rotating 3-D images while their brains are being scanned -- but unlike Greene, Orban's subjects include monkeys as well as humans.

Orban's research shows pronounced differences in the way the two species process 3-D images. Humans show activity in regions of the brain (in the visual and intraparietal cortex) that have no clear counterpart in monkeys.

"The results suggest that, as humans evolved, some portions of their brains adapted to produce specific abilities, such as controlling fine motor skills," said Orban.

So if we have evidence that human brains have evolved spatial processing abilities from monkey brains -- and it seems that we do -- could we have evolved moral abilities from our primate ancestors too?

Sarah Brosnan, of Emory University, Atlanta, has shown that the idea is plausible. She found that trained monkeys have a sense of fairness: They refuse to work if a fellow monkey doing the same job is seen to receive tastier food items as payment.

"Everything that evolves is a modified version of something else that already evolved," said Greene. "If you can trace the evolutionary history of the structures involved in a certain kind of thinking then perhaps you can make the case that the thinking in question is shaped by the creature's evolutionary history."

This kind of thinking is what led Dr. Andreas Bartels, now at the Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics, Tubingen, Germany, to propose (on the basis of fMRI work) that romantic love evolved from maternal love.

Similarly, Dr. Val Curtis of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine published work earlier this year showing that our sense of disgust has evolved to protect us from disease. That sense of hygiene, said Greene, might be the basis for so-called higher senses, such as moral feelings.

Greene is currently working on this idea. "For example," he said, "we might describe the behavior of someone who takes bribes as disgusting. I think that's more than a simple, learned metaphor."

Greene believes that although cultural influences on morals are strong, an important genetic element is also present. "Much of what we think of as culturally learned or individually reasoned in moral judgment," he said, "may turn out to be driven primarily by evolutionary forces."

Everyone has heard kids in the schoolyard call each other "animals" in response to some childish comment or behavior. What the work using fMRI is doing is reminding us that we are all animals. And even our human senses and morals come from them.

Holidays Looking Merry for Web Retailers

By Lisa Baertlein

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - It's shaping up to be a very merry holiday season for online retailers.

Web shopping got off and running for the busiest season of the year with traffic up 60 percent for the week ended Nov. 14 from the prior seven-day period, Nielsen//NetRatings said on Tuesday.

The share of Internet traffic going to shopping sites already has surpassed last year's high, set on Thanksgiving Day, Internet traffic monitoring company Hitwise said.

"As Black Friday approaches, shoppers are flocking online to research holiday gifts, comparison shop, and look at the vast array of products available," said Heather Dougherty, senior retail analyst at Nielsen//NetRatings.

Black Friday, the day after the Thursday's U.S. Thanksgiving holiday, is traditionally the biggest shopping day of the year.

U.S. consumers are expected to spend $16.7 billion online during the holiday months of November and December, an increase of 29 percent from the year-earlier period, according to research firm eMarketer.

Meanwhile, total U.S. holiday retail sales are seen rising 4.5 percent to $219.9 billion, according to the National Retail Federation.

"Online shopping appears to be occurring earlier and in greater force than last year," said Bill Tancer, vice president of research at Hitwise.

"If last year is any indication, we're likely to see weekly shopping levels increase with a peak roughly a week before Christmas," Tancer said.

Nielsen//NetRatings, an Internet audience research firm, which unveiled its sixth annual Holiday eShopping Index on Tuesday, said home and garden, books/music/video, and toys and video games led Web shopping traffic growth.

The home and garden category saw weekly traffic soar 88 percent, as sites run by Home Depot Inc. and Pottery Barn saw traffic increases of 159 percent and 97 percent, respectively.

Visits to books/music/video sites were up 87 percent, fueled in part by a 233 percent increase in visits to No. 2 online bookseller barnesandnoble.com.

The toys and video games category was up 85 percent as traffic to KBToys.com skyrocketed 276 percent and EBgames.com soared 210 percent.

Apparel, another key category for holiday sales where retailers garner a bulk of annual sales, saw a 75 percent increase as the Gap Inc.'s online traffic rose 245 percent and Lands' End increased 68 percent.

Shopping comparison/portals rounded out the five fastest growing categories in the index with a 73 percent increase. Within the category, Yahoo Shopping's traffic grew 174 percent while MySimon's jumped 133 percent.

Hitwise said that the 13 leading comparison-shopping sites claimed 5 percent of all shopping visits last week. Half of that traffic come directly from major search engines and directories like Google and Yahoo Search.

Tancer said that marked "a new era in online shopping."

"Users are becoming more sophisticated in their online purchase behaviors, clearly demonstrating the willingness to use comparison-shopping sites to find the best product at the best price," he said.

The most-visited comparison-shopping sites last week were Yahoo Shopping, Shopzilla's BizRate.com and newly public Shopping.com, according to Hitwise.

The electronic eye, being developed at Kyoto Institute of Technology, could one day be adapted for broader use to help the blind or visually impaired get around without a walking stick or seeing-eye dog.

Tested in a lab by Tadayoshi Shioyama and Mohammad Shorif Uddin, the technology has identified crosswalks, judged the width of roads and deciphered the color of pedestrian signals.

"It's almost real-time. The response time is 3 or 4 seconds," Uddin said Wednesday.

Though a prototype isn't ready yet, Uddin said researchers hope to make a device small enough to perch on a pair of glasses. It will be run by a miniature computer that can speak verbal instructions.

The electronic eye is the latest in high-tech gadgets aimed at helping millions of blind and visually impaired people — 1.3 million legally blind in the United States alone — lead more independent lives.

Canes and other travel aids with sonar or lasers can alert the user to approaching objects. Global Positioning Systems can tell what streets, restaurants, parks and other landmarks the user is passing.

So far, the Japan-based researchers' technology has shown promise at signal lights that don't have audio cues for blind pedestrians.

Using a handheld digital video camera, Uddin filmed 196 traffic intersections in Japan. Back in the lab, a computer program examined the footage using a 3-D matrix, and correctly detected the crosswalks in all but two instances, when it signaled the presence of intersections that weren't there.

"The system fails if the white paintings on the road are not perfect," said Shioyama, who began developing systems for the blind eight years ago. He stressed that the failures didn't pose a risk to the user.

Added features are expected to alert of passing or stationary cars, and computer software that locates the traffic light and analyzes its color also has been tested, Uddin said.

The results were described last month in the journal Measurement Science and Technology, published by Britain's Institute of Physics.

Though the experiments were limited to intersections in Japan, the system would theoretically work anywhere there are striped pedestrian crosswalks and pedestrian signals, Shioyama said.

Katherine Phipps of Britain's Royal National Institute of the Blind said she hadn't heard about the researchers' work. But she welcomed "any technological developments that may be able to aid blind and partially sighted people become more independent."

Online Activities and Internet Addiction

Louis Leung, Ph.D.

School of Journalism & Communication, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shatin, Hong Kong.

Born between 1977 and 1997, Net-generation is the first generation to grow up surrounded by home computers, video games, and the Internet. As children of the Baby Boomers, the Internet is the medium of choice for the Net-geners. Based on the assumption that Net-generation has unique characteristics, this study examined (1) how Net-geners addicted to the Internet differ from the non-addicted and (2) how these attributes, together with the seductive properties of the Internet, are related to Internet addiction. Data were gathered from a probability sample of 699 Net-geners between the ages of 16 and 24. Results show that Net-geners addicted to the Internet tend to be young female students. Being emotionally open on the Net and a heavy user of ICQ were most influential in predicting Net-geners' problematic use of the Internet. Addicted Net-geners are also strongly linked to the pleasure of being able to control the simulated world in online games. The finding reinforces previous research that "dependents" of the Internet spend most of their time in the synchronous communication environment engaging in interactive online games, chat rooms, and ICQ for pleasure-seeking or escape, while "non-dependents" use information-gathering functions available on the Internet. Furthermore, Internet addicts tend to watch television significantly less, indicating a displacement effect on traditional media use for the Net-generation.

Pushing the Wrong Buttons: Men's and Women's Attitudes toward Online and Offline Infidelity

Monica Therese Whitty, PhD

School of Applied Social and Human Sciences, University of Western Sydney, Penrith South, NSW, Australia

Despite current researchers' interest in the study of online sexual addiction, there is a dearth of research available on what constitutes online infidelity. This paper attempts to redress this balance by comparing 1,117 participants' attitudes toward online and offline acts of infidelity. A factor analysis was carried out that yielded three components of infidelity: sexual infidelity, emotional infidelity, and pornography. More importantly, this study revealed that online acts of betrayal do not fall into a discrete category of their own. A MANOVA was performed and revealed a statistically significant difference on the combined dependent variables for the interaction of gender by age, age by relationship status, and Internet sexual experience. The hypotheses were, in part, supported. However, counter to what was predicted, in the main younger people were more likely to rate sexual acts as acts of betrayal than older individuals. It is concluded here that individuals do perceive some online interactions to be acts of betrayal. In contrast to some researchers' claims, it is suggested here that we do need to consider how bodies are reconstructed online. Moreover, these results have important implications for any treatment rationale for infidelity (both online and offline)  

The Relationship between Internet Activities and Depressive Symptoms in a Sample of College Freshmen

Charlie Morgan, OD, MBA, MPA
Department of Sociology and Anthropology, University of Maryland, Baltimore County, Baltimore, Maryland

Shelia R. Cotten, PhD
Department of Sociology and Anthropology, University of Maryland, Baltimore County, Baltimore, Maryland

An Internet survey of college freshmen at a mid-Atlantic mid-sized university was conducted during the spring of 2002 to determine the impact of Internet activities on social support and well-being. Results obtained from the survey allow examination of the impact of amount of time performing different types of Internet activities on depressive symptoms, as measured by the Iowa version of the Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale (CES-D) via a semi-elasticity ordinary least squares regression model. Results indicate that increased e-mail and chat room/instant messaging (IM) hours are associated with decreased depressive symptoms, while increased Internet hours for shopping, playing games, or research is associated with increased depressive symptoms. The implications of these results for institutions of higher education, and Internet and health researchers are discussed.