MIT's Technology Review - June 2004 [PDFs]

From the latest Technology Review magazine, here are some articles I found of interest:

Wireless 911 -- TR has a great way of illustrating how things work, and it's one of the things I like viewing from the monthly magazine. This month's explain the way cellular 911 will work, in concert with GPS or triangulation technologies to locate you in an emergency.

The World's Hottest Lab -- an article profiling Microsoft's Research Centre in China. Set up in 1998 with about $80MM spent to date, the Beijing Research Lab has managed to surpass Microsoft's and everyone else's expectations. To date, they have 70 technologies developed that have made it into products, hundreds of patents, 750 published papers, and all from a staff of about 150 researchers complimented by about 200 interns. The lab secret? The brainpower comes from researchers that are closely tied to Chinese academia -- and staff working 100-hour weeks don't hurt either.

Skype beyond the Hype -- if you haven't found Skype as yet, you'll love it when you click on the link. With over 13MM downloads from over 170 countries, the little application is fast approaching the exposure of KaZaA and its ilk -- and interestingly enough, it comes from the team that brought the world KaZaA. What is Skype? Think of Net2Phone -- only over peer-to-peer networks -- or think of KaZaA for telephone conversations. Skype allows users of the app to call other Skype users and have voice conversations -- across the internet, across peer-to-peer networks, without incurring long distance charges. Where to net? Siemens Mobile is already working on a handset to use the technology, breaking it away from the desktop, and Microsoft has incorporated the software to into Pocket PC PDAs to turn them into mobile phones.

Where's the Beef from? -- Would you pay extra to find out where your meat is from? The Japanese will, and after the spate of mad cow outbreaks, maybe you will soon. The meat processing industry is already working on various technologies to tell you where your meat is from -- and the Japanese already have the benefits of some -- including meat supplied by our very own Maple Leaf Foods. The technologies vying for position include:

RFID -- to individually track animals from birth, capturing growth, sickness and movement information

Retinal-Scanning Identification -- identifying an animal by scanning its eyes

Global Positioning System tracking -- tracking an animal's movement from space

DNA Testing -- testing an animal's DNA to trace an animal anywhere in the process of being alive to becoming food.

These technologies by themselves can't tell you where your meat came from -- but using a number of them together, as well as keeping track of an animal as it becomes pieces of an animal that's sent anywhere in the world -- almost a global registry of dead animals, is a sure fire way of knowing what you're eating. In Japan today, selected meat that's tracked, can have their histories looked up via grocery store computers, which even gives a photograph of the farmer that bred the animal for killing. (I don't know if I'd want to know that much detail.)

Why IT Matters -- Robert Mecalfe, inventor of Ethernet and founder of 3Com, responds to Nicholas Carr's book, Does IT Matter? Mecalfe does quite a nice job of tearing into Carr. Read it! Metcalfe thinks IT does matter, and feels that Carr's book is irresponsible.

Silicon Guinea Pig -- When you take a drug (the medicinal kind), it goes through your body and undergoes many changes, lingers, is stored, and some, if you're lucky, may eventually make it to the scene of your ailment. When drugs are tested in labs, they're pretty much tested in petri-dishes containing the target cells -- which receive the drug directly. If those tests prove successful, animal testing can begin, who's success leads to human clinical trials. The problem with animal testing is that, well, a guinea pig is not a rat which is not a human. In fact, many drugs that are tested animals turn out to have different effects in humans. For instance, penicillin proved toxic to guinea pigs, but were successful in rats -- which is why it was later tested in humans. No one knows for sure how many other drugs that fail in animals, could potentially be safe for humans -- ie. how many drugs are we throwing away? Enter the silicon lab rat -- or hopefully, the silicon lab human. Researchers are working to perfect chips containing simulated human tissues and organs, that could be used to test new drugs, or a complicated multi-drug treatment. Cool!

Some other interesting content from this issue:

Holographic TV

Insourcing

Prototype -- technologies coming straight from the lab

Boosting Biometrics -- using multiple identity measuring technologies as a means of increasing security

Born-Again Heart -- can the damaged parts of a heart be regrown? Here's a startup that thinks so.

Prescient Porsche -- think the gas-electric hybrid is a recent invention? Not really. It's over a hundred years old.

Wicked Innovation -- using dishonesty to spur innovation

Cell Hijackers -- the field of cell engineering known as synthetic biology hold promises for the future, such as bacterium that computes -- recently, researchers have made E.coli cells with a jellyfish gene for fluorescence blink on and off under a microscope -- as well as building new life by using different genes from various other lifeforms -- where today we cut a tree down to make a table, in the future, we may be able to grow a table.

Open Dating -- I didn't know about this one until now. There's an open calendar standard, called iCalendar, that will allow the public and open sharing of calendar files. Now you really can tell everyone where the hell you are.