A fellow faculty member shared these with me and I thought you might find these recent stories interesting. They all involve information systems and technologies that we are studying in our courses this term.
$1 Billion for FBI Biometric Database
The FBI is expected to announce in coming days the awarding of a $1 billion, 10-year contract to help create a database that will compile an array of biometric information -- from palm prints to eye scans. See: http://www.cnn.com/2008/TECH/02/04/fbi.biometrics/index.html
Post offices try to stamp out digital losses
As discussed in Chapter 2 of the text, organizations face business pressures from new technology and must adapt to survive. This CNN story discusses how technology is changing postal services around the world. See: http://www.cnn.com/2008/TECH/02/04/mailinthe.digitalage.ap/index.html
Internet failure hits two continents
Damage to two undersea cables resulted in a widespread Internet failure affecting parts of Asia, the Middle East, and North Africa. Read the full story at: http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/meast/01/31/dubai.outage/index.html
FYI - a third undersea cable was cut the next day (Friday).
Notes on the SmartPen
The smart pen that Wired Campus flagged back in May was unveiled last week at a technology conference in Palm Springs, Calif. The company behind it, LiveScribe, has been aggressively marketing the device to college students with the slogan “Never miss a word.” It’s basically a combination recording machine and camera. Users take notes while a minirecorder, embedded in the pen, records whatever is being said. Later, to clarify the written notes, the user can touch the pen to a specific passage and listen to a recording of the instructor speaking those words. A tiny camera links what is being written to what is being recorded.
http://chronicle.com/wiredcampus/article/2110/inventor-targets-colleges-students-with-smart-pen
