Government Technology - August 2007 - (Page 16)

pectrum reports from the IT horizon Tag, You’re It A startup called Dutch Umbrella is selling advertising spots on umbrellas to shopkeepers and restaurateurs in Fairmount, Pa. Patrons borrow umbrellas from a participating business, then leave them in a collection bin — called a “RainDrop” — at other participating businesses. Each umbrella is identiﬁed by a Motorola radio frequency identiﬁcation (RFID) tag. Dutch Umbrella sends employees outﬁtted with handheld RFID-tag readers to visit businesses and identify each umbrella. This information is entered into a program which computes where the umbrellas travel throughout the city and tracks the circulating umbrellas. The company also creates printouts from the software showing where merchants’ umbrella messages have traveled; data they can then use for marketing intelligence. — INFORMATIONWEEK.COM Speed Chase Long Beach, N.Y., police made its first Segway-assisted arrest, apprehending three juvenile car thieves in early June after an officer pursued them on his two-wheeled, battery-powered Segway. At a top speed of 12.5 mph, the Segway won’t help in a car chase, but its height allowed Officer Jose Miguez to keep the vehicle in sight for two blocks until the teens ditched the moving car to escape moments before it cleared a curb and struck a utility pole. After the car crashed, Miguez said, he caught the 13-year-old driver, who identified his two companions. Long Beach police got two Segways in early May to patrol the city’s 2.2-mile-long boardwalk during the summer beach season. — Newsday and development arm of the U.S. Department of Defense. — TIMESONLINE.COM Segway Taking the Lead Like the United States, the UK’s Internet population promises to be increasingly female, according to Nielsen//NetRatings, which surveyed UK computer users by age and gender at both home and work locations.* MALE FEMALE 25 20 15 10 5 2% 2% 17% 21% 18% 15% 17% 8% AGES 2-17 AGES 18-34 AGES 35-49 AGES 50+ *NUMBERS SHOWN AS A PERCENTAGE OF RESPONDENTS Rapid Growth By 2012, 90 percent of all broadband wireless deployments worldwide will use WiMAX, and demand for WiMAX and broadband customer premise equipment will rise to $3.7 billion, according to Maravedis Inc. Covert Critters to associate editor Shane Peterson spectrum ideas Send In tobacco is projected to kill 50 percent more people than HIV/AIDS, and will be responsible for 10 percent of all deaths, according to the World Health Organization’s World Health Statistics 2007 report. Stinks 2015, Tobacco At some point in the near future, a moth will take ﬂight in the hills of northern Pakistan toward a suspected terrorist training camp. But this is no ordinary moth. The insect will bear an implanted computer chip, which will allow the moth’s entire nervous system to be controlled remotely. The moth will land in a camp without arousing suspicion, all the while beaming video and other information back to its masters via what its developers call a “reliable tissue-machine interface.” The creation of creatures whose ﬂesh grows around computer parts — more popularly known as “cyborgs” — is described as one of the most ambitious robotics projects ever conceived by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the research 16 PHOTO COURTESY OF SEGWAY j http://INFORMATIONWEEK.COM http://TIMESONLINE.COM

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Government Technology - August 2007

Contents Point of View The Big Picture The Last Mile Letter to the Editor GT Spectrum Up Close Vanishing Act Way Back Machine Fast Track to Nowhere Best of Both Worlds Texting 911? GIS to Go Neighborhood Watch Two Cents Products Signal: Noise Government Solutions

Government Technology - August 2007

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