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Q: But with all biometric devices there is a variance factor. The scan that I do today isn’t going to be exactly the scan that I do tomorrow, is that correct?

Hagberg: Fujitsu has worked in biometrics for many years with fingerprint sensors and scanners–both in the manufacturing and the marketing of those technologies. We work with the corporate clients and government clients of Fujitsu Limited, and there has been an interest in moving the level of security up and beyond what fingerprints were able to provide. When you look at the fingerprint sensors and fingerprint biometrics, there is a strong opportunity to utilize those for a range of handheld or low-cost devices where individual usage carries a lot of security threat. It’s not a major concern as is maybe other types of computer systems or physical sites and locations where fingerprints can easily be compromised. If you look at the range of university professors looking to spoof different types of biometrics, they are able to take fingerprint records and etch a fingerprint into a piece of latex and then the sensors or touch pads, you know, read air gaps. Having someone that has built an artificial finger is able to easily compromise most fingerprint sensors in the market. Our customers are looking at ways to overcome that potential threat with a higher level of biometric authentication.

Hagberg: Correct. That’s one of the differences. We looked at iris scan. We looked at facial recognition software and other types of voice recognition software in our thoughts about moving to a higher level modality of biometrics. We determined the iris scan–just from a peer use standpoint, as you highlighted–you’re constantly concerned about the pattern or the particular area in the iris you’re looking at but you have a use concern. I met with some very high-level executives within IT departments of the U.S. security agencies in the last month and I asked them how many of them were comfortable having their iris scanned everyday. Not one hand went up. So, that’s what we found in research in Japan. With both government and corporate employees, they wondered what happens to your eye when it’s scanned everyday for the next five years. Even though you’ll say it’s harmless, they don’t feel comfortable about it. The other thing that we also uncovered in our focus groups and customer discussions was contact. When you look at fingerprint or you look at any other even iris you’re either touching a pad with a fingerprint or you’re leaning against something, a pad for an iris, to position your eye correctly. Say the person in front of you is sweating, they’re leaning against this pad or touch that pad or they’re leaving SARS or avian flu, you know, on that device for you to touch and your eye is one of the most sensitive areas in terms of the transmission of disease; so are your hands. Touching things with your hands or getting close to touching things with your eyes is a concern for transmission of disease. Having a contact-less product like ours where you are holding your hand above the device has satisfied that hygiene and kind of transference of potential contagious disease concerns that we uncovered in our research. We’ve addressed it where I think iris and fingerprints still have a long way to go to address those concerns.

Hagberg: Yes, that’s correct, it’s an image. But it’s the image of moving blood, not of a static pattern. So there are many of professors in the universities in Japan who have been making a practice of trying to spoof biometrics, and they’ve been unsuccessful here. They’ve broken every other biometric except for our vascular vein PalmSecure Product.

Hagberg: Fujitsu looked at a range of products and determined that vascular authentication–reading vein patterns and specifically in the Palm–is best. Our product is called PalmSecure, and what it does it takes a snapshot of blood moving through your vein. Looking into it from three-letter agencies and the government which are very high in security, department of defense applications, this says something. They call it Liveness Detection, which means you have a live body with biometric authentication. Many other biometric authentications can be fooled without live bodies or without live body parts. Fingerprint and iris scans are examples. You’ll see in many modern-day movies or television shows like 24, where people use body parts to overcome and bypass biometric security. With our product you’re looking at moving the deoxidized hemoglobin that’s moving through the vein pattern. You have a near-infrared signal that comes up from a sensor; it reflects off of the hand. The blue blood that’s moving without oxygen through your hand actually absorbs the light and what’s emitted back is the pattern, the vein pattern. It absorbs that light that’s emitted from the sensor.

Fujitsu PalmSecure is another option. Already in use in hospitals and government offices, the device reads the hand’s vein pattern using near-infrared light. On this week’s Security Bites podcast, I spoke with Joel Hagberg, vice president of marketing and business development at Fujitsu Computer Products of America, about the technology.

Q: What is that method that you came up with?

Below is a transcript of part of my interview. The entire podcast can be heard here.

Q: Ultimately, though, this is still an image, is it not?

Hagberg: Well, I think with anything you take it from kind of a multiple snapshot scan of the pattern in your hand. Fujitsu’s research into this over the last 10 years–of working with the product and in general–has shown that there is no variance in your vein pattern without catastrophic injury–meaning losing part of you hand. If you have a cut on the external surface of your hand or other damage externally, it doesn’t affect the blood flow through the vein pattern. Your muscle or structure of your hand is developed from childhood and continues as you move to adulthood. Those veins have settled into place. So the vein pattern signature that you see when you register stays the same. The vein pattern from number of years ago when I registered is no different than when I walk through the facility today to get into our building.

For years, biometric finger scanners have been used in ATMs and at the cash register. But there are problems with finger scanners. Researchers have demonstrated how a flat photograph or molded fingertip can easily fool these devices into giving a false approval. And while face recognition is improving, especially 3D facial mapping, these devices aren’t yet in wide use today.

Q: I guess what I was after–I know with certain retina scans you have to fix your eye on a certain dot and then it takes a only scan of a particular region. So you’re looking at the entire hand–you’re not looking at a subpart of the palm?

“A just balance needs to be found between what can be publicized, in deference to the principles of freedom of expression and of information, and what has to be safeguarded from excessive public curiosity, so as to avoid infringing the individual’s right to privacy and right to his or her picture,” the French embassy observes.

“It does a good job of figuring that out. It uses a variety of technologies to filter,” Hanke said, though it’s “not perfect.”

John Hanke, head of Google Maps and Google Earth, speaks at the Where 2.0 conference in Burlingame, Calif.

BURLINGAME, Calif.–Google has begun testing face-blurring technology for its Street View service, responding to privacy concerns from the search giant’s all-seeing digital camera eye.

Google Street View now blurs some faces in Manhattan.

A Pittsburg couple sued Google for allegedly photographing images on a private drive in April, but it’s legal to take photos from public streets in the United States. However, standards vary.

Street View presents a view of dozens of United States cities from a driver’s perspective (unless a plastic bag is stuck over the Street View camera). It appears Google has begun collecting imagery in Europe as well, along with detailed 3D maps, including Milan, Rome, and Paris.

Google thinks its technology has struck the right technology balance in general.

“It’s a legitimate issue,” he said. He likened the issues some have with Street View to the ones that took place when Google introduced aerial views to Google Maps. It took time for the public, regulators, and Google to get comfortable with the feature, but, “It needs that debate. We see that and try to let it play out.”

Face detection, which humans perform effortlessly with help from some dedicated neurons in the visual cortex, is a decades-old computer science problem. It’s finally arriving in basic form in real-world applications, though, including digital cameras that use it to track and properly expose subjects or take a picture only when subjects are smiling.

(Credit:
Google)

There are some potential complications for Google Street View, though. False positives that blur billboards or works of art with faces could degrade Street View a bit, but missing some faces that are visible could pose privacy problems.

New jurisdictions, new rules
Street View poses other privacy issues besides just faces. Some people aren’t eager to have their houses on display, for example. But much of the hubbub seems to have waned since Google launched Street View in May 2007, and indeed other companies such as Blue Dasher are working on similar technology.

(Credit:
Stephen Shankland/CNET News.com)

Dealing with privacy–both legal requirements and social norms–is hard but necessary, Hanke said.

The technology uses a computer algorithm to scour Google’s image database for faces, then blurs them, said John Hanke, director of Google Earth and Google Maps, in an interview at the Where 2.0 conference here.

Years of research
The face-blurring technology took a year to develop and is based on prior research that took several more years, Hanke said.

Have you found any examples of faces the algorithm missed or that it should have caught? Share the links or other thoughts in the comments section below.

Google has begun testing the technology in Manhattan, the company announced on its LatLong blog. Ultimately, though, Hanke expects it to be used more broadly.

Many times computer algorithms struggle to recognize faces that aren’t straightforward views. But that problem isn’t as bad for Google: the faces that are obscured by hair, telephone poles, or oblique views are likely the ones identifiable already.

It also searches across structured and unstructured sources, offering targeted news feeds, data from the Web, and from back office apps.

The mobile “mashup” allows easy access to information from a variety of sources, including contacts in Outlook, Gmail, Yahoo Mail, LinkedIn, Facebook, and others.

The service is available for Windows Mobile. An
iPhone version is coming at the end of the year, the company said.

SAN DIEGO–Wouldn’t it be nice to have access to the contact information from all your friends, family, and business associates in one place on your smartphone?

SkyData Systems announced at DemoFall on Monday a new mobile application that combines corporate and personal contacts and puts them one click away on a smartphone.

The company on Tuesday detailed the workings of what it says will be the first Platinum level LEED-certified data center hosting facility.

The data center will use outside air to cool its racks of computing gear for 75 percent of the year, which significantly decreases its cooling needs, said ADC President Michel Cohen. Ducts and pipes will be laid to maximize flow and minimize turns that reduce efficiency.

The LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) certification, done by the U.S. Green Building Council, rates buildings on a range of environmental factors, including energy and water usage, materials, and site location. The platinum rating is the highest rating given.

Its Sacramento facility will also have a number of water-saving features, including the ability to capture nearly all its rainwater runoff for landscaping, its cooling towers, and bathroom fixtures.

(Credit:
Elsa Wenzel, CNET)

But it is also looking ahead at emerging energy-efficiency techniques. Customers will have the option of using water to cool their equipment, for example.

ADC (Advanced Data Centers) claims that its McClellan Park facility in Sacramento, Calif., will be 25-30 percent more energy efficient than the industry standard. The building is now under construction and is set to take tenants in the first quarter of next year.

“A year ago, the board and investors made it very clear they felt that (green design) was the right direction for the corporation to take,” Seese said. “And customers are demanding it right now.”

Rather than rely exclusively on air conditioners to push cold air from beneath computer racks, the building will pipe in outdoor air for cooling for most of the year.

ADC has structured its billing so customers pay a percentage of the cooling costs, which gives customers incentive to use energy-efficient technology like virtualization.

Click on the image to take a tour of an existing California data center designed for efficiency.

Paints and sealants without volatile organic compounds will be used in the building, as well as porous and reflective materials to avoid absorbing heat.

Planners are also keeping their eyes on direct-current wiring and equipment to lower electricity usage as well as fuel cells for on-site power generation, said Bob Seese, the company’s chief data center architect.

The answer to cooling ADC’s data centers is blowing in the wind.

It will achieve that efficiency not through esoteric computer technology but by architectural choices.

Worldwide IT spending should top $3.4 trillion in 2008, up 8 percent from 2007, research firm Gartner is predicting.

But much of that growth is due to the decline in the U.S. dollar. When adjusted for currency issues, worldwide spending is predicted to grow only 4.5 percent.

“Software as a service/cloud computing, service-oriented architecture/Web 2.0, and open-source software are causing huge changes to the software market,” wrote Joanne Correia, managing vice president at Gartner in a research note. “Many of these factors are impacting market growth as enterprises replace assets with per-use services.”

Software spending and IT services are expected to see the biggest gain, up 10 percent and 9.4 percent respectively in 2008.

Analysts attributed some of the software growth to replacement cycles, but noted that “the replacement of systems does not automatically equate to new software market growth.”

Hardware spending is expected to rise 7 percent in 2008, thanks to strong Asia/Pacific and Western Europe sales and a global shift to mobile computers.

Populist could be one of the more convoluted products I’ve seen lately, but it’s a whole lot of fun once you know what you’re doing.

Populist is the first project from the folks at Particle, who include the founder of uber-hip event service Crush3r (review) and the designer of many of Yahoo’s mobile apps. Keep an eye on these guys.

(Credit:
CNET Networks)

You begin with 14 categories to start filling in. Every time you update that information other folks will be able to view it along with any of your previous entries as noted with a number that shows up when you mouse over it. You can also expand the types of things you’re sharing all the way up to 29 categories with some of the more obscure ones like recipes, rides, and “un-obtanium” for things you’ll never be able to afford or get your hands on.

(Credit:
CNET Networks)

Having recently taken a look at Plurk, I feel compelled to give it a mention here since the two share some quirks in common. Like Plurk, Populist is a service that’s been designed to help people broadcast little bits of information to others in a very structured manner. What makes it different is that it’s all about stuff you like in various categories like books, movies, TV shows, and more. Jaiku toyed with this idea a little by letting people add tiny icons to their posts, but Populist takes it a step further by making those icons double as categories.

Populist is a cross between a microblogging tool and a social-bookmarking service. Users of either service will likely be left scratching their heads.

Adding entries is a simple affair. You can even post pictures.

The only problem is that exploring the existing community is tough. I found the public stream of people’s additions a little difficult to sort through (messages are literally flying back and forth across the screen), but once you’re on someone’s profile it’s a simple affair to drill down into any of their categories and find some things worth clicking and potentially bookmarking.

Like any other bookmarking service, the idea is that you can find other people who are discovering things you haven’t and track what they’re digging. In that regard there’s a very loosely useful built-in social component that lets you befriend others and track what they’re saving and sharing, as well as capture anything they’ve posted and add it to your own lists.

See also: Friendfeed

A major complaint with Netflix’s current selection of streaming movies and shows available through its “Watch Now” service is that it doesn’t contain enough recent titles. Now, according to several reports online, it looks as though Netflix is looking to change that.

This is big news for Netflix, which has been struggling to sign studios up to make their new releases available for instant watching. In terms of new releases, this deal gets Netflix one step closer to being on the same level as the on-demand offerings from Comcast and Verizon. Netflix’s overall library, however, goes deeper than Comcast’s or Verizon’s because it offers many classics on top of these newly added new releases. Additionally, this deal allows subscribers to stream the Starz TV network on their PCs.

Update October 1, 4:20 a.m. PDT:
Netflix has officially announced the partnership, and says that the first 1,000 or so Starz titles are now available.

The best part of this news, for Netflix subscribers, is that all of this extra content isn’t going to cost them a dime. All Netflix subscribers with unlimited subscriptions (those $8.99 and up) will have access to the Starz Play selections. When you pair this news with this summer’s release of Roku’s killer set-top box for Netflix and this fall’s Xbox 360 dashboard update, which will enable Netflix streaming, Netflix’s service is looking more attractive every day.

On Wednesday, the company plans to announce a new partnership with Starz to offer subscribers 2,500 additional movies from Starz Play. Starz Play’s selection includes current hits such as No Country for Old Men, Superbad, and Ratatouille, as well as indie films, concerts, and classic movies. The first 1,000 of those movies, added to Netflix’s current offering of 12,000, should, supposedly, be available immediately, but they are not available on Netflix’s site yet. Expect the update to come sometime on Wednesday.

The site is launching this summer with plans for an application programming interface that developers and content creators can plug into in 2009. There’s also an upcoming
Wii-optimized version of the site that will let you channel surf from your couch–that is, in case there’s nothing good on TV.

Lil’Grams is a real-time publishing tool for parents for text and media of their children. Like Tumblr, it separates what type of post you’re about to do by what type of media it is, and adds on an extra layer of protection by letting you pick the privacy options before it even goes live. Likewise your friends and family members can choose what type and how much of any updates they want to receive, keeping them from getting spammed by your 500th picture of your child smearing food on his or her face.

CrowdSpring, a start-up we listed as one to watch, is a marketplace for creative ideas. The site lets you put out a project and get it crowd-sourced. The winner gets cash and potentially a job depending on what idea hunters are looking for. The service keeps track of completed projects and ideas in progress, which you can see in this logo contest, which had nearly 200 submissions from independent designers who were called upon to help rebrand a site.

The service is launching in beta next week with plans to open up to everyone in late summer. Rafe will no doubt be doing the hands on and sending me and everyone he knows a million alerts of said food smearing.

Coming up next is the last session of the day with a handful of start-ups that specialize in useful eye candy. Stay tuned, and catch up on all our coverage here.

Putplace is an online storage provider. The service links together all your files with digital signatures and then puts it on a huge file map. These signatures track where you’ve shared those files online so you can view the past history of any given file.

Ffwd (pronounced “fast forward”) is the creation of former iLike and Garageband.com CEO Patrick Koppula. I got a demonstration of it earlier Tuesday and it’s a really fun idea, blending a little bit of the fun of channel surfing Web videos in a similar fashion to what’s been seen on StumbleUpon. Instead of random Web videos though, Ffwd is all about channels and exploring other sets of videos as they’ve been sorted into those channels.

PutPlace is launching at the end of the month. Until then, it’s in private beta.

The site got its name for the ridiculously oversized fast-forward button that skips to the next clip in whatever channel you’re on. Users also have the option to jump to three other channels where the same video they’re currently watching is housed.

The service will also estimate how much online storage you should use based on what you’ve got laying around on hard drives and what services you’re using. When it comes time to get some online storage, you can buy it from PutPlace based on how much you need.

Lil’Grams works via e-mail, SMS, and Twitter. You just send an item to a special address and it will organize it and archive it for you. Webware’s Rafe Needleman attempted doing something similar with Gmail starting last month, but if you don’t feel like filling up your in-box, this is a more organized solution.

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.–The second to the last group rounding up Tuesday’s presentations at the Under the Radar conference comes from all walks of Web services. There’s a tool to post your baby photos, one to have artists and creative types scramble to create something for you, an upcoming video channel surfing app, and one that organizes all your files online and off.

In February 2009, TV broadcasters will vacate wireless spectrum used to broadcast analog TV signals. Instead, broadcasters will transmit digital TV signals, which use spectrum more efficiently and provide better picture quality. The transition to digital means that some older TVs, and TVs with analog-only tuners, will have to be retrofitted to tune into digital signals.

A report issued by the Government Accountability Office showed that nearly half of the households that could lose TV service after the transition to digital broadcasting are still unprepared for the switch.

Many of the 70 million or so analog TV sets that rely on over-the-air signals belong to minorities, senior citizens, low-income individuals, and people who live in rural areas. The fear is that these individuals will not be ready for when broadcasters stop transmitting analog TV signals in February 2009.

Preparation for the switch to digital TV is being closely watched since some older TVs that have not been retrofitted won’t work after the analog signals stop broadcasting.

About 84 percent of consumers were aware of the transition, but many didn’t know what they had to make sure their TV service wasn’t interrupted, the GAO report said. More than half of those surveyed said they were aware of the government’s voucher program to subsidize the cost of converter boxes that are needed to view digital TV on older analog TVs. But about two-thirds of those people didn’t know how to get a coupon.

Even consumers who won’t be affected by the switch were confused, The Washington Post reported. Roughly 30 percent of those who don’t actually need a converter box said they were getting ready for the transition.

The vouchers, which cover $40 of the cost of the converter boxes, started being sent in February. But they expire after 90 days. The agency overseeing the program reported that more than 40 percent of the 800,000 vouchers that have already been sent out have not been redeemed. And the agency doesn’t have enough money to pay for the postage to resend these vouchers.

The transition to digital TV is not going as smoothly as some had hoped, according to some government agencies that testified to Congress earlier this week.

The confusion is occurring despite broadcasters and cable operators airing public awareness campaigns on TV.

The 0.9 version of OpenSocial will add templates and markup, making it easier to develop the user experience dimension for an application. “Templates and markup are now in discussion on public mailing lists, but we believe we are pretty close,” Kraus said. Regarding when OpenSocial is deserving of a version 1.0 designation, Kraus said that the “community will make the call.”

In addition, the OpenSocial community is working on compliance tools, such as an application that determines the level of compliance for a container.

At this juncture OpenSocial version 0.7 has an addressable market of more than 300 million social network users, including the social networks that have delivered OpenSocial applications or are actively developing them, according to Joe Kraus, Google’s director of product management. Friendster, which claims 75 million users including 55 million in Asia, recently unleashed OpenSocial for its developer community. Hi5 has more than 1,800 OpenSocial-compliant applications and 66 million installations, according to platform architect Paul Lindner. Hi5 has nearly 60 million users, with 80 percent outside the U.S., according to ComScore.

To further untether OpenSocial from its origins, Google has also proposed an OpenSocial Foundation, which would be a steward for ensuring the OpenSocial specification stays open and intellectual property and patent non-assertions are handled so that developers feel safe about using the code, Kraus said. An announcement about the OpenSocial Foundation is expected “really soon,” Kraus added.

The community Kraus speaks of is the group of about 350 developers participating in the main discussion around the evolution of the open-source OpenSocial specification and reference implementation. Google obviously has major clout in the evolution of OpenSocial, but Kraus noted that just 10 percent of the major participants are from Google.

Google clearly has a vested interest in seeing OpenSocial succeed. As Google’s Vic Gundotra explained at the November 2007 launch, OpenSocial makes good economic sense. “The more applications, the more usage. More users means more searches. And, more searches means more revenue for Google. The goal is to grow the overall market, not just to increase market share.” Having the an open source community behind it will make Google’s economic mission much easier.

(Credit:
Google)

“Hi5 launched with OpenSocial very early–January 1, 2008–and we ended up building the system, which had a lot of undefined pieces,” Lindner said. “We had a lot of custom work with the REST endpoint so that applications could contact our server directly. As time went by all participants came up with one-offs, but now we are bringing it all together in the community with common types of solutions for these problems. Standardizing on a single specification will allow application developers to write code once and it will work on all different containers. We are already seeing others build on REST specification. Plaxo, for example, has enabled privacy-enabled exchange of contact info.”

Overall, Kraus said that there are more than 4,500 OpenSocial applications and 150 million installs. In comparison, Facebook, which has so far eschewed OpenSocial, has more than 30,000 applications and 700 million installs.

(Credit:
Google)

“We expect to reach 500 million OpenSocial users by the end of the quarter. It’s also very international, as social networking is a global phenomenon,” Kraus said.

On November 1, 2007, Google launched
OpenSocial, a set of APIs that leverage JavaScript and HTML for creating applications that access friends and update feeds from any compliant social network. Nearly 10 months later, Google is touting the maturation of the OpenSocial specification and growing developer and user adoption.

The latest version of OpenSocial, 0.8, adds a number of new features that extend beyond its original JavaScript roots. “When we launched OpenSocial JavaScript was the center, but the community wants more choice. We agreed upon a RESTful API that gives access to the social bits and is already implemented in Apache Shindig and deployed by hi5 in beta,” Kraus said. The OpenSocial RESTful API specification defines how servers, mobile devices, and desktop computers interact with OpenSocial containers without the need for JavaScript or direct user interaction.