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TECHBITS: Odor recorder, Phone scam, Package deals, PSP ads, Intro to robots
By The Associated Press
The Associated Press
People stopping to smell the roses might soon take that sweet floral fragrance home with them or even send it to a faraway grandmother.
Scientists at the Tokyo Institute of Technology are developing a gadget that promises to record and replicate the world's odors.
The device analyzes smells through 15 sensors, records the odor's recipe in digital format and then reproduces the scent by mixing 96 chemicals and vaporizing the result.
Creator Takamichi Nakamoto says the technology will have applications in the food and fragrance industries, where companies want to replicate odors.
But it could also allow smells to be recorded in one place -- by sensors in a mobile phone, for instance -- and transmitted digitally to appreciative noses halfway around the world. Online shoppers might perhaps check out perfumes or flowers before they buy.
Nakamoto said his smell recorder has successfully recreated a range of fruit smells, including oranges, bananas and lemons, but can be reprogrammed to produce almost any odor -- from old fish to gasoline.
Nakamoto says his machine, in the works since 1999, is the most advance of its kind in the world, though a similar project is also underway at Keio University, also in Japan.
But so far, the 3-feet-by-2-feet device is too big to be portable.
The breakthrough follows on the heels of a Japanese smellovision project that synchronized smells to movie scenes. That odorous endeavor was undertaken by NTT Communications Corp. and emitted smells from under seats in two movie theaters to accompany parts of the film "The New World," a Hollywood adventure film.
The NTT project, though, was about reproducing smells rather than recording them as well.
U.S. startups have developed similar technologies before, although at least one company had to shut down during the dot-com bust.
_ Hans Greimel, AP Writer.
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Hackers are ringing up new scam tactic
BOSTON (AP) -- Internet con artists are turning to an old tool -- the phone -- to keep tricking Web users who have learned not to click on links in unsolicited e-mails.
A batch of e-mails recently making the rounds were crafted to appear as if they came from PayPal, eBay Inc.'s online payment service. Like traditional phony "phishing" e-mails, these said there was some problem with the recipients' accounts.
Phishing e-mails generally instruct recipients to click a link in the e-mail to confirm their personal information; the link actually connects to a bogus site where the data are stolen.
But with Internet users wiser about phishing, the new fake PayPal e-mail included no such link. Instead it told users to call a number, where an automated answering service asked for account information.
Security experts tracking this scam and other instances of "vishing" -- short for "voice phishing" -- say the frauds are particularly nefarious because they mimic the legitimate ways people interact with financial institutions.
In fact, some vishing attacks don't begin with an e-mail. Some come as calls out of the blue in which the caller already knows the recipient's credit card number -- increasing the perception of legitimacy -- and asks just for the valuable three-digit security code on the back of the card.
"It is becoming more difficult to distinguish phishing attempts from actual attempts to contact customers," said Ron O'Brien, a security analyst with Sophos PLC.
Vishing appears to be flourishing with the help of Voice over Internet Protocol, or VoIP, the technology that enables cheap and anonymous Internet calling, as well as the ease with which caller ID boxes can be tricked into displaying erroneous information.
The upshot: "If you get a telephone call where someone is asking you to provide or confirm any of your personal information, immediately hang up and call your financial institution with the number on the back of the card," said Paul Henry, a vice president with Secure Computing Corp. "If it was a real issue, they can address the issue."
_ Brian Bergstein, AP Technology Writer.
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A travel Web site debuts -- for packages
BOSTON (AP) -- The inspiration struck Bill Van Wyck while he drove around one day trying to find a good deal on a package he was sending to Australia: What if a Web site could offer side-by-side comparisons of shipping rates, just like travel sites do with airfares?
Van Wyck gathered about $5 million from investors and turned the idea into RedRoller.com, a site that debuted last month.
Enter your address, the weight of a package and its destination, and the site displays a grid with the prices various couriers would charge to send the item, depending on the delivery time. With a few clicks, you can print a shipping label and schedule a pickup, or find the nearest drop-off center.
"Instead of being designed to ship people, it was designed to ship packages," Van Wyck said.
Targeted at small businesses and shipping-intensive consumers such as eBay sellers, RedRoller is free to use. The Norwalk, Conn.-based company expects to make money from advertising and supplemental businesses such as sales of shipping supplies and integration of RedRoller's service with outside sites.
The site connects to FedEx, DHL, the U.S. Postal Service and some regional couriers, but there's a conspicuous absence: UPS, which refused to open its systems to RedRoller.
UPS spokesman Steve Holmes said the company generally lets third parties deal with its customers only when UPS can maintain some control over the process.
Even if UPS were to change course, shipping industry analyst Satish Jindel of SJ Consulting Group Inc. suggests RedRoller will be lucky to survive. Jindel said similar ideas have failed, partly because there are key differences between shipping and the airline industry, with its inscrutable pricing schemes.
"If they are able to make a great success of it," Jindel said, "I will say they are truly geniuses."
_ Brian Bergstein, AP Technology Writer.
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Sony stops Dutch PSP ads seen as racist
TOKYO (AP) -- Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. has removed billboards for the new white version of its PlayStation Portable video game player following complaints of racism, the company said. Sony also apologized.
The billboards, which went up in the first week of June only in the Netherlands, showed a white woman dressed in white threateningly grabbing the face of a frightened-looking black girl, with an attached catch copy saying, "PlayStation Portable White is coming."
The provocative image was one of several versions showing the two women in different poses, company spokesman Nanako Kato said Wednesday. They appeared exclusively in Amsterdam and several other major cities in that country.
Sony said the ads were intended only to emphasize the color contrast between the existing black PSP and the new ceramic white PSP.
"We only intended to make a sharp contrast between black and white, but never meant to discriminate against anyone," Kato said. "Even though the ad was perceived in an unexpected way, we'd like to apologize to the people who were offended by the ads."
She said the complaints have come mostly from outside the Netherlands.
The PSP, a portable version of the PlayStation, is a hot-seller for Sony. It went on sale in Japan in December 2004 and the United States earlier this year.
Last year, Sony sparked controversy in the United States with PSP ads disguised as graffiti.
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Robots coming to intro computer science
PHILADELPHIA (AP) -- Two colleges are hoping to make computer science courses more attractive by including personal robots with the textbooks.
Looking to boost enrollment in introductory computer science classes, Microsoft (News - Alert) Corp. is working with Bryn Mawr College and Georgia Tech on developing new ways to bring robotics technology into the classroom.
The software company is creating the Institute for Personal Robots in Education, which will be based mainly at the College of Computing at Georgia Tech.
Douglas Blank, a computer science professor at Bryn Mawr, said the goal will be to start incorporating the robots in introductory courses at the suburban Philadelphia college next spring. Georgia Tech hopes to start during that term as well.
The idea behind the program, Blank said, is to make computer science more hands-on and practical, rather than simply about debugging programs.
A special computer program will let students control their robots via computers. Students will be taught how to search a maze, follow a line, use sensors to avoid objects and even play tag.
"What we want to do is make that very concrete," Blank said. "If the robot isn't behaving correctly, then you have to figure out why."
Plans call for Microsoft to devote $1 million to the project over the next three years, with the two schools chipping in an additional $1 million combined.
_ Patrick Walters, AP Writer.
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