Technology

Continental Airlines passengers flying out of Houston, Texas will soon be able to board their flights using their cell phone or personal-digital assistant in place of a standard boarding pass. The paperless boarding pass is part of a three-month ... test program that will gauge the responsiveness of passengers and overall efficiency of the service. Instead of fumbling through a myriad of papers, Continental Airlines will only require their passengers to show a bar code that the airline had previously sent to their cell phone or PDA. The two-dimensional bar code is nothing more than a jumble of ... (view more)

UK laptop buyers will now have greener purchasing options thanks to a recent Toshiba initiative. For an extra £1.18 (or $2.43) Toshiba will plant a tree in the consumer's name, which they claim will "offset the lifetime carbon footprint of your  ...computer." One of several companies to launch recent green initiatives, Toshiba's new program is certainly a step in the right direction. However, critics warn that these activities may give consumers a false sense of accomplishment. (Source: arstechnica.com ) Toshiba will plant native UK trees and smaller ground cover species for the next ...<a href="/news/2940/stop-global-warming-one-toshiba-laptop-time" class="more-link">view more

We all do dumb things. I once lost my house keys for days, only to find them placed neatly underneath a bowl of salad in the kitchen fridge. Now, there's a response to these "mental farts": fish. According to researchers at the University of Oxford ... in England, elderly men and women performed better when tested for memory, visual conception, motor skills, verbal fluency, general orientation, and even attention after they had consumed fish regularly over an extended period of time. According to Dr. A. David Smith, principal author of the Oxford study, "All six cognitive tests were performed ... (view more)

Google is introducing an innovative service to customers, this time targeting web mobile users. The 'My Location' feature in Google Maps Mobile 2.0 is currently undergoing beta testing and will attempt to provide mapping services via user cell ... phones. The concept of mapping technology in mobile devices is not particularly ground-breaking, as several smart-phones currently on the market have Global Positioning System (GPS) technology embedded into them. However, the advantage of this new service will be to provide access to mapping services to web mobile users whose devices do not have ... (view more)

In a move that has rocked the entire mobile phone industry, Verizon Wireless recently announced that consumers will soon be able to choose which phones they'd like to use with their Verizon network plan. Analysts are shocked that Verizon would be ... the first to initiate such a major shift in communications, as the company has traditionally followed far different business practice. The introduction of the Apple iPhone, one of the first mainstream multimedia devices of its kind, coupled with future plans from Google to develop software that basically controls cell phones, has pushed the industry ... (view more)

I bet Al Gore likes it when we have to shell out more dough to fill our gas tanks. Indeed, there's a good chance any environmentalist appreciates high fuel costs, especially now that a recent study is reporting that skyrocketing energy costs can ... limit greenhouse gases. Unfortunately, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) study can't find a good side for everything. Sure, the environment is going to benefit if we all try to avoid paying high fuel prices by carpooling, taking public transit, or heck, a bicycle to work, but the general trend is not good. In fact, the MIT researchers ... (view more)

Microsoft has announced a Word plug-in to make it easier for visually impaired users to use its program. The plug-in will read Word 2003 and 2007 files out loud, and will also convert files from Open XML (the standard format used to save Word 2007 ... files) into DAISY, a format which is easier to use for producing digital audio files. DAISY (Digital Accessible Information Service) is a not-for-profit group based in Zurich, Switzerland. Formed by "talking books libraries," DAISY promotes open standards to make it easier to produce digital files. (Source: Guardian.co.uk ) Reed Shaffner, ... (view more)

On Friday, Microsoft announced a new program to help put more second-hand computers pre-loaded with Windows in the hands of consumers. Building on the success of its 'Community Microsoft Authorized Refurbisher' program, which helps deliver used PCs ... with authorized copies of Windows to charities, educational institutions, and nonprofits, the software giant announced a similar program for commercial businesses that resell computers. Prior to this announcement most PCs that entered the 'used' market were shipped without an operating system, because Microsoft required the units to have both their ... (view more)

Computers can now recognise the work of different artists and even tell the differences between genuine paintings and fakes. Scientists at Israel's University of Haifa have developed a mathematical program that analyses paintings geometrically. The ... computer breaks down the picture into its component sections, then calculates the sines and cosines. (If you've forgotten your high school trigonometry, that means the relative size and shapes of triangles.) Once the computer learns the pattern of a particular artist, it can identify whether another painting is legitimately that person's work. ... (view more)

The Interpretype has turned one auto repair shop into a haven for deaf customers, helping to triple sales figures compared with the previous period. Ken Gan owns a garage in Rochester, New York. His shop seems to look like any other standard North ... American auto repair station, except for one major difference: the shop has an above-average number of deaf customers. Gan admitted that he had searched for more accommodating equipment for quite some time, but nothing has been available on the market to facilitate face-to-face communication in a situation such as a shop or office. So when all else ... (view more)