You Are Viewing Technology

A few years ago, there were rumours about the companies that make Antivirus software. It was said that most of the virus’ that spread around the globe, were “planted” by the same companies. Kind of to keep their business going. I don’t know if that is true or not, but if it is, then what is the antispam software business doing? I have yet to find a decent antispam software for Windows. Outlook has somewhat good filters, but they still miss a few messages here and there, and they still pass some non-spam mail to the spam folder. Anyone know of real efficient antispam?

How hard is it nowadays to find the domain you want? Pretty hard, I would say. At least if you want to find a domain within the .com, .net or .org top domains. Why’s that? I think it’s because the prices of domain names have fallen, from being at 35 USD / year when I purchased my first domain back in 1996, to 2.95 or even for free (when buying other services). This invites users to buy loads of domains, even though they are not used. A good domain search tool that I’ve found is GODADDY. They are cheap (around USD 9.00 for domains) but give you all kinds of suggestions if the domain name you are searching for happens to be taken. For instance, today I was looking for PYME.COM. PYME stands for Pequeñas Y Medianas Empresas (Small and Medium Sized Companies). Obviously, the name was taken. But Godaddy.com suggested another 20-30 variations of that name, like MyPyme.com, Pymeonline.com, etc.

Fact is, it’s impossible to find a good domain name nowadays without using a good domain search tool.

One thing I like about technology, is the way it makes life easier. Even though new technology often make your life miserable for a while, until you get the hang of it. I’ve been working with biometrics for around 6 years now, and evolution is really fast! For instance, when I began with all this back in 2000, a fingerprint reader (parallell or serial interface) was big, bulky and didn’t work too good. The price was also somewhat shocking, around 400-500 USD for a simple reader. Today you can buy Microsofts Fingerprint reader at Wal-Mart for around 35 bucks. Now that’s evolution. I think biometrics are going to replace, or at least coincide with many other identification tokens. A photo ID will – I think – always be the preferred form of identification for most people. But now biometrics are taking the step INTO the photo IDs. A smartcard photo ID can store your fingerprint template without much hassle. Services like PAYBYTOUCH let you shop without even carrying your wallet! Your phone number and fingerprint is enough!

The biggest hurdle with fingerprint technology – as I see it – is to find a 100% secure and fast way of identifying people with their fingerprints. Today it’s fairly easy to make a verification system, where you just input a userid and then your fingerprint to verify that you are you. But it would be way easier just to put the fingerprint on a reader and have that system say that you are you. With 100% certainty. For high security systems, we’re far off yet. But for system where security isn’t of outmost importance, identification has come a long way. CERBERUS, for instance, is a time and assistance management solution that relies 100% on the fingerprint of the user. So far, we’ve had no trouble whatsoever with that. You see, when you make fingerprint recognition systems, there are two parameters you always must keep track of: The FRR rate and FAR rate.

FRR = False Rejectance Rate. This tells you the rate of how many times a system rejects you, even though you have registered your fingerprint.
FAR = False Acceptance Rate. This tells you the rate of how many times the system accepts you, even though you haven’t registered your fingerprint.

Obviously, in both cases you seek to have as low a rate as possible. The FRR rate isn’t as critical, because if the system rejects you, you just put your finger on the reader again and eventually it will recognize the fingerprint. The FAR, on the other hand, is critical indeed. Imagine you are going to pay something with your fingerprint and the system believes you are somebody else. As long as the FAR rate on identification systems isn’t 0.00%, they won’t be used for critical applications. Today, CERBERUS has a FRR of far less than 1%, and a FAR of around 0.001%. Still, if you want to make payment systems with fingerprint identification as basis, that 0.001% is still too much.

We’ve thought of using an identification system involving 2 fingers stored for each user in a database. Using the first fingerprint, the system searches for the fingerprint it “thinks” is the right one (FAR, remember?). The second fingerprint would just confirm the system’s theory. If the 2nd fingerprint matches the stored 2nd fingerprint, you’ve got yourself a quick’n'dirty semi-identification system.

Saw an interesting article in CNN.COM about how Wal-Mart and other big retailers are reducing costs and improving efficiency using RFID tags on merchandise.
They have gotten their biggest suppliers to add RFID chips to pallets and cases shipped to stores. Now, rather than having people with bar-code scanners walk around to take inventory, RFID readers in warehouses can automatically tally items on the fly.
This helps not only in the warehouse, but when they move merchandise to the store, and ultimately when they throw away the cases.
According to studies, one of the costliest problems in retail is when a consumer goes to a store to buy an item, only to find that shelf empty – although replacement merchandise is sitting in the warehouse. With RFID, you get the chance to replenish items much quicker than in a “manual” fashion by looking at the shelves.
So when are we going to find RFID tags on that box of cereal, or that coke-bottle? Not anytime in the near future. RFID is still too expensive for single item marking (tags cost between 5 to 7 cents today). There are also privacy concerns regarding the use of RFID for monitoring people’s buying habits. And then there’s the security problem regarding the frequencies these tags use and the ease of interference or “hacking”.

…as I said before, I like looking att cool DIY projects, like the ones found at MAKEZINE or POPULAR SCIENCE. Just now, I was browsing the webiste of the latter, and there they have a section called HOW 2.0. I found a really cool photo frame made with an old laptop that downloads pics thru WIFI from FLICKR – now, how cool is THAT? Check it out HERE

I’ve been reading up a little bit about Google Pagerank, search engine optimizing and stuff. Google ranks its’ pages not by content or keyword occurrences, but by the number of external links that link to a page. In my specific case, no other pages link to my blog (yet), which means that my pagerank is really low, like “0″ at the moment. The “weight” of the website that links to your website is also important, so if you get someone that has a high ranking website to link to your site, your pagerank will increase and thus you will appear higher up on Google’s list. Interesting, huh?

A friend of mine, Drasko Markovic is about to release a search engine analyzer tool, and you can read more about it on his blog. It’s a pretty cool tool that can help you optimize your page, and give you some understanding as to how the search engines work. Tho official web address is SEARCH ENGINE ANALYSIS

Hopefully the pagerank of this page will soon be increasing as I will try to link to other blogs, etc. All in an effort to understand how this works. If you read this blog and like it, feel free to link to www.lekare.com!

Today, Mexico’s largest newspaper, REFORMA had a special supplement called ‘Internet in Mexico’. This supplement, as usual full of ads and ads disguised as real articles, gives some interesting statistics about the state of Internet penetration in Mexico:

17% of all Mexicans (17 million people) have Internet access
59% of Internet users are male
71% of all Internet users connect to the Internet through a broadband Internet connection

This leads me to think that Mexico is a country steadily advancing (albeit too slow) in the IT sphere. I believe this has many reasons:

The poverty / lack of education is of course the biggest culprit here. No money = no connection. Although there are zillions of Internet cafées spread all over the country, charging no more than 5-10 pesos (around 40-80 cents) an hour, which is good.
The monopoly that Telmex has on the broadband connections in Mexico. Telmex owns the physical phone lines, so there is essentialy no competition. Sure, there are cable companies offering “broadband access” that starts at 64kbps, and some companies offering Wimax-like connections. The absolute majority of the broadband community in Mexico are connected through Telmex. They keep their prices fairly high, and their connection speed fairly low, the fastest available connection is a 1.3 mbps downstream (384 kbps upstream) connection for around USD 100 / month. Comparing to US ISPs and European ISPs, the prices are extremely high, for the low speed they offer. There are rumours of raising the speed to 8 mbps or even 24 mbps in some areas, mostly to try to provide IPTV services and thus to push the cable companies out of the market. Mexican anti-monopolistic laws are really flawd and easily manipulated by companies like Telmex, that use these laws to it’s own benefit. This leaves us consumers wanting more for our money, but receiving less and less.
It sucks.