traces

New tablet app could diagnose concussions on the sidelines

It's no secret that the standard hand-eye coordination tests doctors use to monitor neuromuscular deficits -- typically when a patient is injured or as a patient ages -- can be subjective, relying on, say, descriptions of reflexes and cognitive status such as "mild," "moderate," and "severe."

So researchers at the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard, the Beth Israel Medical Center, and Hebrew SeniorLife have been developing what they call a rapid neuroassessment device, nicknamed NeuroAssess, to measure neuromuscular performance quantitatively instead of qualitatively.

They've recently tested it on 150 … Read more

Feds snoop on social-network accounts without warrants

Federal police are increasingly gaining real-time access to Americans' social-network accounts -- such as Facebook, Google+, and Twitter -- without obtaining search warrants, newly released documents show.

The numbers are dramatic: live interception requests made by the U.S. Department of Justice to social-networking sites and e-mail providers jumped 80 percent from 2010 to 2011.

Documents the ACLU released today show police are using a 1986 law intended to tell police what phone numbers were dialed for far more invasive surveillance: monitoring of whom specific social-network users communicate with, what Internet addresses they're connecting from, and perhaps even "… Read more

Crayola Trace & Draw turns iPad into art pad

You can already transform your iPhone into a baby toy and let your cats paint on your iPad. Now it's time to turn your toddlers loose on your Apple device.

The Crayola Trace & Draw system from Griffin Technology is an iPad 2 case designed to bring out your young one's inner Matisse or Motherwell.… Read more

Log roller

Unix programmers use the "tail -f" utility to display the most recent additions to growing files such as server logs. Hoo Technologies' WinTail is essential a "tail -f" utility for Windows. It's a real time log monitor and file viewer that displays the ends of large, growing files quickly without the need to load the entire file to view it and without making any changes to the log files. System administrators can use it to view application traces logs and server logs in real time. It can capture and display OutputDebugString() Windows API output too, … Read more

Capable computer cleaner

When it's time to get rid of old computers, many people think erasing and reformatting a hard drive is sufficient to keep private information out of others' hands. But to keep your private data safe from others, you really need a more thorough tool and EAST-Tec's DisposeSecure fits the bill. This hard-disk and network sanitizing utility can completely eliminate data beyond the possibility of recovery. It uses Department of Defense standards for data destruction, but users can configure custom security levels too.

DisposeSecure is a powerful and competent tool, and its interface and features reflect that, once you … Read more

HP researchers develop browser-based darknet

Two researchers for Hewlett-Packard have created a browser-based darknet, an idea that could make it easier for businesses to keep eavesdroppers from uncovering confidential information.

Darknets are encrypted peer-to-peer networks normally used to communicate files between closed groups of people. Most darknets require a certain level of technological literacy to set up and maintain, including taking care of the necessary servers. However, HP researchers Billy Hoffman and Matt Wood plan next week to demonstrate a browser-based darknet called "Veiled," which they claim requires little proficiency to set up and run.

"This will really lower the barriers to … Read more

Start-up Caustic targets ray tracing for graphics

A start-up called Caustic Graphics aims to etch a place for itself in PC graphics, using a technique more common in Hollywood than in Silicon Valley.

Tantalizingly for those in the high-tech industry, the company was founded by a trio of engineers from Apple, including James McCombe, a twentysomething who worked on graphics used in the iPhone and iPod, according to a write-up on Caustic posted late Sunday in the online version of The Wall Street Journal.

Caustic Graphics is focusing on ray tracing, a method for rendering computer-generated graphics that promises more realistic--even photorealistic--images than those that come out … Read more

Second Firefox 3.1 beta brings significant changes

Usually not much happens to a software product from one point release to the next, much less one beta version to the next. But Mozilla has made quite a few changes with the second beta of Firefox 3.1, released Monday.

In the new version are support for video and audio built into Web pages, a built-in service for telling Web sites a user's location if users permit it, private browsing, Web worker support for more powerful Web-based programs, and my favorite feature, the TraceMonkey engine for running the JavaScript programs used to build sophisticated Web sites. TraceMonkey was … Read more

iPhone apps of the week

I hate to start off this week's post with a another pet peeve I have, but I must say something about a problem I have with the iPhone/iTunes marriage. As always, please let me know if I'm missing something that might help my problem in the comments!

My question is this: Why can't I buy an app from the app store through iTunes on any computer and download it to my iPhone?

Understandably, I synced my iPhone to my home computer because that's where all my music is. But when I come to work and … Read more

After speed boost, Firefox a developer default?

Firefox is already plenty fast. In one test, it comes in just behind Safari in speed, but in this case, "slightly slower" still means "blazingly fast."

Thanks to Mozilla's pioneering work with TraceMonkey, however, Firefox is about to become even faster. Think massive performance boost.

CNET's Stephen Shankland has already covered the story in detail, so I won't belabor it here, but this promises to be an impressive breakthrough for browser performance--and especially for Firefox. As Mike Shaver, Mozilla's interim vice president of engineering and former chief evangelist, declares:

The goal of … Read more