Tag archive: Cambridge

If any of you tech savvy readers are looking for a gig, Stephen Hawking is apparently in the market for a right-hand man/woman. The Stephen Hawking website posted a job opening last Thursday for a Technical Assistant.  The famous British theoretical physicist and cosmologist is well-known to us lay folk through his series of popular science books like A Brief History of Time and The Universe in a Nutshell. The 69-year-old Hawking is also… Read More

We've all dreamt of having X-ray glasses to reveal to us things which we cannot see. But what if we had a device that could show us something deeper, some truth about the people we meet? That is now a reality, with a new kind of glasses that use real-time facial recognition technology to unmask a person's true emotional state, reports Sally Adee in New Scientist. The implications of such a technology are profound, to say the least.… Read More

Security researchers from the University of Cambridge have demonstrated a flaw with chip-bearing payment cards widely used throughout Europe that could potentially let criminals use any PIN code to confirm a transaction is legitimate, completely bypassing the card's safety technology. The attack requires detailed knowledge of how the chip-and-PIN cards operate along with some external hardware: it basically executes a man-in-the-middle… Read More

Taiwanese display maker Prime View International (PVI) has announced a definitive agreement to acquire Kindle and Sony Reader display maker E Ink for about $215 million. E Ink makes displays that have a look similar to printed paper and, while slow, they are readable in direct sunlight, and thus ideal for devices like the Amazon Kindle and the Sony Reader. Once the acquisition is complete, PVI plans to continue developing E Ink's… Read More

Just when you think things are getting a little safer, more depressing news appears. This time it’s thanks to a pair of doctoral students, who have used a simple radio antenna to eavesdrop on the electromagnetic signals raised each time a key on the computer keyboard is depressed, according to the BBC. The students, Martin Vuagnoux and Sylvain Pasini from the Security and Cryptography Laboratory at the Swiss Ecole Polytechnique… Read More

25 British Prime Ministers have gone to Oxford. But when it comes to Nobel laureates, Cambridge has the edge on its rival. Yes, the competition between the two venerable British universities is strong. But this is the 21st century, so the Guardian reports that the pair are competing on a new battlefield – iTunes. Between them, Oxford and Cambridge are putting around 450 hours of free podcasts, lectures, films and admissions guides… Read More

If you’ve ever had fantasies of being a real James Bond, Facebook might be the best place to start that new career. Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service – better known as MI6, the organization that runs agents abroad – has begun advertising for recruits on the social networking site, a big turnaround from the times (quite recent times, in fact) when it would quietly look for the qualified among Oxford and… Read More

You wouldn’t expect much engineering effort to be poured into software for a task as simple as arranging photos into a collage, but Microsoft has taken the concept to its logical extreme with AutoCollage 2008, released Thursday. The advanced program from Microsoft Research Cambridge takes combining images to a new level of automation with object recognition, face detection, image blending, and other computer graphics wizardry. While… Read More

Charles Darwin’s book, The Origin of Species, helped changed our views about the world, and was one of the revolutionary texts of the 19th century.   Until now, though, all the papers he’d put together during his voyage on the Beagle and the first draft of the book could only be seen at the Cambridge University library. But they’ve become part of the 20,000 items now available in the Darwin Online archive, a vast… Read More

In a surprise move, cable operator Comcast has reversed it's controversial policy of filtering some types of network activity—like BitTorrent and other P2P file-sharing programs—in the name of "network management." According to a company statement, Comcast will treat all types of Internet traffic equally and adopt a new set of network and traffic management tools that don't discriminate between different… Read More

At a hearing yesterday in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Federal Communications Commission chairman Kevin Martin weighed in on Internet service providers that engage in "network management" practices that involve degrading service for some types of traffic—like file sharing applications—in favor of others. While allowing that service providers should be able to take reasonable steps to make sure their networks run… Read More

Cambridge SoundWorks followed up its well-received Newton HD speakers with a sequel line on Wednesday, the Newton Series II. The company claims it massaged the original speakers with new materials, refinements, and updated aesthetics. Rather than using paper or plastic for the Newton II woofers, Cambridge SoundWorks reached into the exotic materials pile and came up with Kevlar, which it claims produces a stiff, light cone that… Read More

The One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) organization has revealed that the price for its XO laptop computer aimed at schools and education systems in the developing world has increased to $175 per unit. The initial goal of the program was to produce systems at $100 per unit; the price tag was eventually raised to $140, but only after several new features were added to the design, including a video-capable digital camera. However, MIT's… Read More

Cambridge SoundWorks today said they'd begun sales of a new HD-enabled stereo table radio. The SoundWorks Radio 820HD is priced at around $300 and should be available through various outlets across the country. The Cambridge SoundWorks Radio 820HD, as the name implies, is a HD Radio device. HD Radio, as Cambridge describes it, "allows AM and FM stations to broadcast digital signals in tandem with their analog signals, providing… Read More

Viacom's MTV Networks has announced an agreement to acquire game maker Harmonix for $175 million in cash. Harmonix wasfounded in 1995 in Cambridge, Massachusetts with the idea of finding ways for non-musicians to have fun making music; the company shot into the industry spotlight with its rock guitar simulation gameGuitar Hero, published by RedOctane and Activision, which ships for Playstation 2 with a unique guitar-shaped game controller.… Read More