15 bleeding-edge network research projects you should know about

Ever wondered what university's and independent labs are doing with the millions of dollars in funding they receive each year? Well here are 15 of the most interesting projects:

Could your keyboard spy on you?

Start-up testing auto-aiming antenna for wireless nets

Researchers claim network security breakthrough with quantum cryptography

Military research aims to develop self-configuring, secure wireless nets

Super stealthy Internet messaging method revealed

Diamonds are your cell phone's best friend

Watch out U2 and AC/DC: Here comes the air guitar shirt

More phishing suckers out there than we thought

Wireless energy could power electrical devices

Communicating even when the network’s down

Security researchers tout zippier way to squash computer worms

Study provides insight into hacks

Google research: Cranking up the heat may not harm your disk drives

Researchers say they peeled The Onion Router

Wi-Fi, without those pesky routers

New Mobile Computing Centre Launches

Good news for New Zealand,

"Massey University is officially launching a centre for mobile computing at the end of May. The centre, which has been up and running for six months, is focusing on research in the areas of mobile business, mobile health and mobile learning, says Dennis Viehland, associate professor of information systems at Massey University’s Auckland campus."

[source: Computerworld]

Ultrasmall or just ultratricky

Devices designed for mobile computing are getting ever smaller but humans are not, so when will designers manage to hit the sweet spot between small enough for portability and big enough to use and interact with?


Ultramobile computers, such as this Sony Vaio UX Premium, show the difficulty in making small PCs usable. Watching users fumble and nearly drop an early version of the FlipStart compact PC practically gave Robin Budd a heart attack. The users were simply trying to press the three-key sequence, Control-Alt-Delete.
“They would be holding the device in one hand, and they would try to get their three fingers on the keys at one time,” said Budd, senior director at FlipStart Labs. “You can do it if you’re fairly nimble with your fingers, but it’s sort of a tippy, precarious thing.” What was the solution you might ask: well the designers created a dedicated key marked “Ctrl Alt Del".
The smaller the device gets the better the interface has to get but really how small can they go?

Tablet PC LE1700 with extra sexyness

Mobile Computing just got sexier with the release of the new Tablet PC LE1700 with the latest Intel Core 2 Duo Processor Technology.
The LE1700 breaks ground by being the first slate Tablet to pack a 1.5-GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor. It doesn't stop there however, it has a host of other components and features including:

• up to 4GB of RAM,
• 30GB or 60GB hard drives,
• a biometric fingerprint reader,
• TPM,
• Wi-Fi,
• Bluetooth,
• 3G connectivity (EV-DO Rev. A, HSDPA),
• Vista Business or XP Tablet PC Edition 2005,
• Motion WriteTouch display,
• automatic switching between digitizer and touch input.
• 12.1-inch SXGA+ display

For those interested the LE1700WT starts at a base price of $2,199, or if that is a bit on the expensive side you could get the LE1700WT outfitted with an Intel Core Solo processor for $1,999.

[source: openPR]

Mobile Web Applications to Rival Microsoft Office

In a previous post I talked about moving from one computer to the next and wanting to take my settings and applications with me.
Almost in passing I mentioned Google docs, but just today I have found another similar service which seems to have even more choice of web applications: ZOHO.
I have been using Google docs to store my dissertation and many other documents, so whenever I have a free minute and a computer attached to the Internet I am able to make additions and changes. I have found this service very useful and will probably continue to use it but I am a fickle person and always want to try new things (you never know if they are better without trying) so I am going to give some of ZOHO's products a try. I will let you know what I think once I have given them a bit of a road test.

Technology that just disapears

Ed over at Pocket PC Thoughts has come up with yet another list of technology that came on strong and then just disappeared. He doesn't mean things like floppy drives which just got replaced by better technology; he refers to software which in theory should be able to evolve with people's demands. His list includes:
"

• Netscape Browser - the first browser for the masses
• Commodore Computing - The Commodore 64 was the first computer for home users to have real penetration into the market
• PalmOS - The only thing left of PalmOS is a 5 year old platform being held together with spit and bailing wire to ineffectively keep up with today's mobile computing needs.
• WordPerfect - WordPerfect was the de facto standard word processor, especially in legal firms.

"

[source: Pocket PC Thoughts]

The new Quad-Core Intel Xeon processor 5300 series

Intel Corporation introduced the Quad-Core Intel Xeon processor 5300 series with extended life cycle support the other day, to commemorate 30 years of delivering products and technology to the embedded computing market.
"The breakthrough performance and power efficiency that characterize the industry's first quad-core processors for embedded are as unmistakable as the raw power of the four cylinders of the Intel Chopper's quad engine,"

[source: itVARnews]