Google does free 411

Google has a new telephone service in the U.S. called Voice Local Search. It’s the equivalent of dialing 411, but free, really fast, and pulls multiple listings like you’d get from a search in Google local. Mobile phone users can get listings sent to their phone via SMS, including the telephone number and full address. You can also be connected to a business for free, a great feature that got dropped from my previous favorite free 411 service 1-800-Free-411.

The entire service is controlled by computers, and the voice recognition is pretty capable. I tried confusing it with foreign restaurant names, and even a few made up ones, and if it didn’t get it, it would at least try and give me reasonable recommendations that sounded similar. This is the perfect service for people who want to pull up an address without needing a smart phone with a data plan, or a friend near a computer or the yellow pages.

The one thing still missing is residential listings, and advertisements. The latter of which will most certainly be added knowing Google. In the meantime, enjoy ad-free 411 goodness by dialing 1-800-GOOG-411 (1-800-466-4411).

Source: Google does free 411 | Crave : The gadget blog

Google Homes

Homes, not just homepages
Posted by Ethan Russell, Google Product Manager

More than ever, home buyers are starting their search online, and we want to make it easier for every one of you to find the home of your dreams. Searching on Google for Seattle real estate or homes for sale in San Diego prompts you to enter a location and choose whether you want to buy or rent.* After clicking “Go,” you can see the individual homes that Google has indexed, provided by our partners and culled from the web. When you want more information on a particular home, you can click straight through to the source of the listing—no detail pages or sign-up forms get in the way. And when Google gets the same listing from multiple sources, we show links to all the data providers and websites, ranked according to many factors including, but not limited to, the quality and comprehensiveness of the data.
If you’re a real estate professional, making your listings searchable on Google is simple and completely free. We don’t charge for photos or offer “featured listings.” We believe that buyers just want to see the home that fits them best and that providers shouldn’t have to pay to show it to them. We don’t sell houses, deal with agents’ compensation, or charge for leads. Our business is helping people find the information they’re looking for—when you have it, we send them directly to you. We have a bunch of different upload options tailored to how technical your organization wants to be. These options and our listing removal tools are designed to ensure that content providers maintain control over their data. If you have ideas or feedback for us, please contribute via our Google Group.

Source: Official Google Blog: Homes, not just homepages

"Should I buy a Plasma, LCD, Projection or CRT TV?"

From Ask Dave Taylor

Buying a television has never been more complicated than today, with four primary television technologies — plasma, projection, LCD or CRT — and a variety of different scan rates and resolutions, including HD, which has different meanings for different vendors.

More televised and DVD content is becoming available in High Definition (HD), digital broadcasting is becoming a requirement for terrestrial broadcasters, and more TVs are coming on the market to take advantage of these technologies. The result? It’s getting more difficult to stick with your old CRT TV, but hard to know which new technology will work best.

So you’re ready to consider upgrading. Good. Me too. But, which technology will it be?

Will it be plasma, with vivid colors, fast refresh and great contrast? This is the display most consumers drool over at their local big box store. The prices have been coming down over the years, so they’ve actually become an option for many of those potential purchasers.

The downside to plasma is high power consumption and relatively short life span. I have a 32” Sony CRT from 1996 that is only just now starting to show its age - the tuner is failing - so now I use the tuner in the VCR and pipe it to an input on the TV.

But that’s a completely different story…

Some tests have shown that the ability for a plasma display to show true black decreases by 13% over the first four weeks. Over a period of a few years this could show blacks as light grays in your image.

The high power consumption may not bother you if you don’t mind paying a bit more for your electric bill, but the real issue is the amount heat generated. In the spring of 2006 Philips paid to have components replaced due to heat related issues in 12,000 plasma TV’s that were already in people’s homes.

The heat comes from the million tiny fluorescent tubes on a heavy glass substrate that produce the image. This design is also part of the longevity issue. The high heat produced in a small area burns out the phosphors sooner than the phosphor on a traditional CRT. And, in tying everything together, this can also result in image burn-in especially on channels that display their logo continuously in the lower right corner.

Higher end plasma sets address some of these issues, but of course they are more expensive, so most people would be buying the less expensive versions that still have these problems.

So how about LCDs?

These are the most ubiquitous of the post-CRT technologies. They are much less expensive than plasma, but also tend not to have pictures that are as sharp or bright. Some manufacturers have started using LEDs instead of the standard fluorescent lamp to illuminate the display to improve the characteristics. Without a lamp to backlight the display, the LCDs would change but you would not be able to see them as they only filter light, they don’t emit it.

The other downside to LCD displays is that the pixels are relatively slow to change state. Fast moving objects such as a hockey puck or baseball bat get blurred where they might show more crisply on a plasma or good quality CRT. Among the attempts to overcome this particular limitation is to increase the refresh rate from 60Hz to 120Hz.

Projection on the rise

In my youth I had friends whose parents had some of the original projection TVs. My recollection is of large screens (maybe 60”), but rather washed out color. It didn’t really matter, as we would be watching old Dr. Who episodes of bad sci-fi.

Today, projection television has grown up and joined the fight for living room/media room space. The technology now produces much sharper, more vivid images that in previous years with deeper blacks that rival the CRT, and beat most of the plasma and LCD displays. This is the way to go for display sizes of 50 inches or greater.

There are several competing technologies in projections sets: Digital Light Processing (DLP), micro-LCD, and Liquid Crystal on Silicon (LCOS). DLP uses a couple million hinged micromirrors to reflect light (or not) through a color wheel. The micro-LCD passes light through three individual LCD screens (red, green, and blue) and uses mirrors to recombine the image for display. LCOS is similar to DLP in that light is reflected to form an image, but the light is reflected from a surface blocked by a liquid crystal filter, rather than redirected by mirrors.

The main drawback for any of the projection technologies is the lamp used as the light source. The typical metal halide projector lamp only lasts 1000 to 2000 hours and can cost several hundred dollars to replace. Longer life span lamps called ultra high performance (UHP) have recently come on the market that use mercury vapor instead of argon and have lifespans ranging from 3,000 to 10,000 hours.

As with LCD display, manufacturers are moving towards high intensity LED technology to replace lamps and get lifespans measured in years. Of course, that technology is not cheap, but prices should come down as they become more available in the next several years.

On the horizon we can look forward to SEDs.

What is SED?

SED is Surface-conduction Electron-emitter Display. These should be coming on the market in about 2008/2009. Japan will probably start seeing them by the end of 2007. They are a flat panel display, much like the LCD displays now, but have characteristics resembling that of the CRT for contrast and image quality. This comes from basis of the design: each pixel is basically a tiny CRT. It uses less energy than plasma since it’s easier to generate an electron beam (as a CRT does) than it is to excite photons in a gas (as the plasma display does).

Since there are no production display available for test, we need to take the manufacturers’ word that the displays have faster response than plasma or LCD, along with brighter colors and more vivid picture quality. There are no data yet for other performance or reliability factors.

So if you can hold out a few more years (and are willing to pay 50% more than a plasma goes for today), SED will make you the new cool guy on the block!

Whichever you choose, good luck and may your new TV be a wonderful addition to your household.

Source: “Should I buy a Plasma, LCD, Projection or CRT TV?” from the Ask Dave Taylor! Tech Support Blog

Comparing Two PDFs

Acrobat for Legal Professionals

The other side is strictly maintaining document control for the new agreement you are negotiating. Opposing counsel will only give you a PDF and now there are several revisions.

If you had the original word processing files, you could compare them using a tool like Deltaview or perhaps the built-in tools provided in your word processor program.

But…  you only have PDFs.

You need to find out what has changed.

What to do?

Fortunately, Acrobat Professional can create a side-by-side comparison report and to help you spot any changes.

Deletions are indicated with red strikethrough text:

Additions have blue underlines:

Read on to learn how to easily compare two documents using Acrobat.

Document Comparison using Adobe Acrobat

Adobe Acrobat Professional 7 and 8 offer the ability to compare two PDFs.

To compare to PDFs:

1. Locate the original or older version of the file and open it in Acrobat
2. In Acrobat 7, choose  Document—>Compare Documents
   In Acrobat 8, choose Advanced—>Compare Documents
3. Click the Choose … button and locate a newer version to compare
   
4. Enable the Textual Differences radio button
5. Enable the Side by Side Report radio button

Acrobat will produce a new PDF which contains a summary cover page:

Text Comparison Summary

If you scroll down, Acrobat will display the older document on the left and the newer document on the right.

Other Comparison Considerations

Note that Acrobat creates a new, temporary document which represents the comparison. Don’t forget to save it if you will need it later.

Acrobat can also spot visual differences between documents. For example, it is possible to compare drawings. However, Acrobat will detect the subtlest change—even a single pixel.

Posted by Rick Borstein at 08:15 AM on March 20, 2007

Source: Acrobat for Legal Professionals: Comparing Two PDFs

Ensnared on the wireless Web

Hackers’ latest tactic to steal information is setting up fake hotspots that users unwittingly use to access Internet.

* Expert’s tips for safer surfing

By Tami Abdollah, Times Staff Writer
March 16, 2007

As Los Angeles and hundreds of other communities push to turn themselves into massive wireless hotspots, unsuspecting Internet users are stumbling onto hacker turf, giving computer thieves nearly effortless access to their laptops and private information, authorities and high-tech security experts say.
It’s an invasion with a twist: People who think they are signing on to the Internet through a wireless hotspot might actually be connecting to a look-alike network, created by a malicious user who can steal sensitive information, said Geoff Bickers, a special agent for the FBI’s Los Angeles cyber squad.

It is not clear how many people have been victimized, and few suspects have been charged with Wi-Fi hacking. But Bickers said that over the last couple of years, these hacking techniques have become increasingly common, and are often undetectable. The risk is especially high at cafes, hotels and airports, busy places with heavy turnover of laptop users, authorities said.
“Wireless is a convenience, that’s why people use it,” Bickers said. “There’s an axiom in the computer world that convenience is the enemy of security. People don’t use wireless because they want to be secure. They use wireless because it’s easy.”
For Mark Loveless, just one letter separated security from scam.
Logging on to his hotel’s free wireless Internet in San Francisco last month, Loveless had two networks to choose between on his laptop screen — same name, one beginning with a lowercase letter, one with a capital. He chose the latter and, as he had done earlier that day, connected. But this time, a screen popped up asking for his log-in and password.
Loveless, a 46-year-old security analyst from Texas, immediately disconnected. A former hacker, he knew an attack when he saw one, he said.
Most Internet users do not.
About 14.3 million American households use wireless Internet, and this figure is projected to grow to nearly 49 million households by 2010, according to JupiterResearch, which specializes in business and technology market research.
“There’s literally probably millions of laptops in the U.S. that are configured to join networks named Linksys or D-Link when they are available,” said Corey O’Donnell, vice president of marketing for Authentium, a company that provides security software. “So if I’m a hacker, it’s as easy as setting up a network with one of those names and waiting for the fish to come.”
Linksys and D-Link are two of the many commercial brands of wireless routers, products that allow a user to connect to the Internet using radio frequency.
As the field of wireless connectivity expands, so too does a hacker’s playground. More than 300 municipalities across the country are planning or already operating Wi-Fi service.
Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa last month announced plans for citywide Wi-Fi in 2009. USC already offers free wireless, and by the end of March, Los Angeles International Airport will officially offer wireless at all its terminals under a new contract with T-Mobile.
Some airlines already offer Wi-Fi at LAX. “There are no signs for any service at all, so if any passenger is accessing a free wireless service … they should be cautious,” said Nancy Castles, an airport spokeswoman.
A survey at Chicago’s O’Hare Airport by Authentium revealed 76 peer-to-peer networks, or access points that are connected to via another user’s computer, with 27 of them advertising access to free Wi-Fi — a trademarked term for the technical specifications of wireless local area network operation. The company also found that three of the networks had fake or misleading addresses, one sign the hotspots could be hackers.
“At a busy place like O’Hare, in one hour a bad guy could get 20 laptops to connect to his network and steal the users’ account information,” said Ray Dickenson, vice president of product management at Authentium, who conducted the survey last September.
Corporate networks are sometimes the most vulnerable, as employers push for a more mobile workforce without always educating its users on the security risks of wireless Internet.
Many workers rely on corporate firewalls in the office and an automatic default network setting that links them to their corporate networks. Outside the office, the firewall is no longer in place. That means the computer is unprotected. Once hackers have “got a toehold in a network, it’s pretty much game over,” Bickers said.
Most laptops are configured to search for open wireless points and common wireless names, whether or not the user is trying to get online. That leaves people open to hacking.
In two new attacks, called “evil twin” and “man in the middle,” hackers create Wi-Fi access points titled whatever they like, such as “Free Airport Wireless” or an established, commercial name.
In the “evil twin” attack, the user turns on a laptop, which may automatically try to connect. When it does, it is connecting to a fake access point, or “evil twin,” and the hacker gets into personal files, steals passwords or plants a virus.
The hacker can become a “man in the middle” when he funnels the user’s Internet connection through this false access point to a true wireless connection. The unsuspecting Wi-Fi surfer may then proceed to enter credit card information, access e-mail or reveal other sensitive data that can be tracked by the hacker. Meanwhile, the session appears ordinary to the user.
Although the FBI has been aware of this kind of attack for about five years, its use has increased in the last couple of years and is being seen as a “huge threat,” Bickers said.
“The actual tools you need, the software, the hardware, etc., to mount this sort of attack has become insanely easy to acquire,” Bickers said. “You need a laptop, wireless radio and the ability to download a free tool and run it. It literally is child’s play.”
The creation of the access point itself is not generally considered criminal; it’s what happens next — tracking people’s Internet use — that can cross the line.
These hacking techniques are considered to be “tantamount to a computer intrusion and illegal interception of wireless communication that can be prosecuted under federal law,” Bickers said.
But computer evidence and statistics are hard to come by, said Arif Alikhan, a former federal prosecutor and former chief of the cyber and intellectual property crimes section for the U.S. attorney’s office in Los Angeles. People can unwittingly compromise their computers in a multitude of ways, and often there’s no trace.
“You can tell how many burglaries occur because you’re victimized, and someone knows they’re victimized,” Alikhan said. “People don’t always know if someone is using their wireless network, and it’s very difficult to tell unless you trace back every single connection…. It happens more than I think we all realize.”
The U.S. attorney’s office will not comment on pending investigations; however, wireless hacking cases are relatively new, and few if any current cases involve “evil twin” or “man in the middle” attacks, law enforcement authorities said.
“This is a classic case of law and law enforcement being a little behind the technological curve,” Bickers said.
Other types of wireless-related Internet hacking cases have recently popped up across the country.
Nicholas Tombros was found guilty in 2004, under the federal Can-Spam Act, of “war-spamming.” He drove around the Venice Beach area with his laptop and used unprotected wireless access points to send spam. He could receive up to three years in federal prison at his sentencing next month.
He is the only defendant who has been charged in a case involving wireless hacking by the Greater Los Angeles section of the U.S. Department of Justice’s cyber and intellectual property crimes division since it was established in October 2001, according to Assistant U.S. Atty. Wesley L. Hsu, deputy chief of the section.
“They are technically difficult cases…. They’re difficult cases to put together, so law enforcement is having to sort of catch up,” Hsu said.
On Sept. 30, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed into law the Wi-Fi User Protection Bill, which aims to block unauthorized sharing of open Wi-Fi networks and inform users of the dangers of unsecured networks. Starting in October, warnings and tips will be required on all wireless home-networking equipment sold in California.
The law specifically addresses “piggybacking” — or the use of another person’s wireless network to access the Internet — a problem that security experts say has been a concern for years.

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tami.abdollah@latimes.com

Source: Ensnared on the wireless Web - Los Angeles Times