One hack from our Disrupt NY Hackathon, called Kar Nanny, seeks to let users see where their kids are driving and get notifications if they're being unsafe. Or you can see where your spouse is. Or, if you own a car rental fleet, this will give you the opportunity to keep tabs on how renters are using your cars.Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/n2hy3x5Z-BU/
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Proposals to open the U.S. East Coast for oil and gas exploration mean an increasingly noisy neighborhood for marine life. David Biello reports
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[audio clip] That's the sound of air gun testing for the presence of oil and gas under the seabed. ?Air gun? is a euphemism for a massive release of compressed air. Don?t like it? Neither does underwater life.
Such testing also isn't a one-off burst of 250-decibel sound louder than a jet engine. For days or even weeks at a time, these guns send a volley of ear-shattering sound through the ocean to impact the seafloor every ten seconds or so. That's nearly 9,000 such bursts per day.
Our mammal cousins, whales and dolphins particularly loathe air guns. Perhaps that's because hundreds of thousands of the animals can be injured by them each year.
As you can imagine, in addition to injuring whales and dolphins through hearing loss, it also puts them off their food and has even been linked to strandings. And it's not just sea mammals. Turtles, fish and other marine creatures are similarly affected as the sound travels for thousands of kilometers.
And this is all before any drilling takes place. If fossil fuel exploration is opened up along the U.S. East Coast, an already noisy neighborhood from ship traffic will get a lot louder.
?David Biello
Source: http://rss.sciam.com/click.phdo?i=5b0f485e4d3cf73ccd639c9e0ff68207
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ZyXEL's CloudEnabled Network Pan & Tilt Camera provides some fairly sophisticated network surveillance camera features that can benefit small businesses. Remote camera movement control, bundled Network Video Recorder (NVR) software, and infrared motion detection all make this an attractive and affordable video surveillance solution for a home or small business. But the web-based and bundled software need some significant improvements before the product can be considered a home run. Without robust NVR software, Zyxel's camera is more on par with consumer webcams and, in that space, Logitech's Alert 750n Indoor Master System??is actually a better home IP camera.
Introducing the CloudEnabled Network Pan & Tilt Camera
Without a doubt, many will find that ZyXEL's camera looks like a miniaturized robot or some machine roving the surface of Mars?it's very impressive looking. The camera sits on a base, and a motor moves the camera head so you can position it remotely. You can turn the lens up, down, left, or right while viewing a live feed.
The camera features a 1/3-inch CMOS Megapixel sensor. The lens specs include a focal length of 4.0 mm and a 10x digital zoom.
The rear panel has an Ethernet port, an EXT port, audio out, microphone in, a microSD slot, and a USB port only for connecting the accompanying wireless USB adapter. At first I thought you could add a USB flash drive for storage purposes in the port, but you can't.
The camera ships with a power adapter, Ethernet cable (it can operate wired on a network or wirelessly), a quick installation guide and install CD. The camera can be ceiling or wall mounted?it also comes with a wall mount plate, screws for a ceiling mount, screw anchors, and a camera pad.
Setup
The camera's installation disc has a setup utility, bundled software, and a user manual. I set up the camera following the quick-start guide's instructions. These instructions cover connecting the camera to a router via the Ethernet cable (this must be done for initial setup even if you plan to operate the camera wirelessly).
Once the camera is powered up, its red LEDs light up and the camera rotates on its own with robotic-like movements?making for a very cool boot-up.? ZyXEL's camera also has an additional LED on the front which turns from a psychedelic purple color to solid blue once the power and a network connection is established.
Insert the disc and the "eaZy" wizard launches. The wizard offers a diagram how all the cables connect from the camera to a computer to a router. It then advises that even if you plan to use the wireless, you still have to set up through a wired connection first.?
The LED in the front should be blue, the wizard states, once the power and LAN connections are made.? The software wizard also detected my camera on my network right away and displayed its IP address.? I then gave the camera a name and description, which is optional.
The camera supports DHCP, or you can give it a static IP address. During setup, you also specify how you plan to orient the device, either upright or hanging upside down from a ceiling mount. In the latter case, the video is rotated 180 degrees.
If you plan on operating the camera wirelessly, you can choose that option during setup. The setup software performs a scan of all wireless networks in proximity and you can select one to connect to. The wireless setup is a bit of a hassle, because you have to know what type of encryption the Wi-Fi network you're connecting to uses, and not just the fact it may use WPA2 but whether its AES or TKIP encryption. Ideally, since the software can perform a Wi-Fi survey, it should be able to pick up the encryption method.
The fact that you have to initially set this up on a wired network makes for some potential network conflict once you connect wirelessly if the wireless router is on a different network. I had some difficulty doing this kind of setup. The software doesn't handle the network change well and gives no indication at which point you should disconnect the LAN cable.? I ended up having to use a router that was on the same network as my wired connection?your best bet for the wireless setup. Most SOHO small business users will likely have one network, for wired and wireless, all powered by the same router, but if not the network conflicts are a possibility setting up wireless. Setup wraps up by asking you to create an iSecurity account. This is a cloud service that allows for remotely viewing the camera from a browser or mobile device.
iSecurity
iSecurity provides a live feed from your camera. The interface has arrow buttons that allow you to move the camera at different angles. There are also some configuration options, such as setting the video stream resolution (640x480, 320x240, 160x120), frames per second, and video quality.
It's a decent cloud service, but the free version is very limited. To share camera streams with friends or to access advanced features, you'll have to get a paid iSecurity subscription for $5.99 per month (or $59 per year).
After I activated the paid account, I had some more options such as a sharing tab, which lets you invite friends to view your stream. Just enter in their email address, add a note, and they are sent a link. The invited viewers must also create an iSecurity account (they can view with the free account).
An "events and motion" tab lets you set motion detection sensitivity and enable notifications. With notifications on, an email is sent to an inbox or a notice is sent to a mobile device (if using the iSensitivity mobile app) whenever motion is detected.? With these events, the camera will record images that you can flip through like a slideshow.
The iSecurity interface is easy to navigate, but I found it somewhat lacking. For instance once you log in to the cloud service, the "Login" button remains at the top of the screen. This was confusing as I moved around the interface: Unless I was on the live camera feed page, I couldn't tell if I was logged in or not.?
Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ziffdavis/pcmag/~3/0dvVDlHtG24/0,2817,2418140,00.asp
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The Keystone pipeline, a project to transport heavy crude from Canada to the Gulf Coast, is expected to provide hundreds of temporary construction jobs in the U.S., but critics say the oil it carries comes at a terrible cost. NBC's Anne Thompson reports.
Anne Thompson, chief environmental correspondent, NBC News writes
While the possible construction of the Keystone XL pipeline has made for contentious disagreements from the halls of Congress to ranches in Nebraska, the real environmental debate begins in a place most Americans have never heard of.
Nearly 700 miles north of the U.S.-Canada border sits Fort McMurray, Alberta, the unofficial capital of oil sands country,?and the heart of the Keystone controversy.
Canada's oil reserves rank third largest in the world and sit beneath the vast Alberta forest. Oil mining companies like Shell, Syncrude and Suncor surround the town. They are big industrial operations in an even bigger forest.
Oil here is not the liquid black gold you think of in Texas or Oklahoma or the Gulf of Mexico.? It is a tar-like substance called bitumen.? It is excavated by mining or steam assisted drilling, where it is literally melted a quarter mile beneath the earth.? This oil is so heavy it must be upgraded or diluted before it can transported.
At Shell's jackpot mine in the oil sands, the company digs 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. Twenty-eight trucks burning 45 gallons of diesel fuel an hour transport the goods once lifted from the ground.
The whole operation is a carbon intensive process sending more global warming gases into the atmosphere. How much depends on your point of view.?The oil industry downplays the impact,?but opponents claim it is up to 37 percent more carbon intensive to produce a barrel of crude from oil sands.
The State Department, in its review of Keystone, says the oil from this area produces 17 percent more greenhouse gasses than conventional crude.?? Those emissions are the heart of the environmental debate in Alberta, and a big reason why opponents call this "dirty oil."
Jeff Mcintosh / AP file
This Sept. 19, 2011 aerial photo shows a tar sands mine facility near Fort McMurray, in Alberta, Canada.
The oil sands industry here plans to more than double its production by 2030. Shell Vice President Tom Purves explains, "We have a massive resource here that's oil from a country that's very stable, it's a democratic country. We're able to transport this oil on pipelines safely to the US and other parts of the world, other parts of North America. And I think we'll be using fossil fuels for a long time - this will be an important part of it."
Opponents say this is not about stopping development. They realize this is a natural resource crucial to Canada's future. For them, it's about the pace, the scale and how it adds to Canada's carbon footprint. They worry approval of the Keystone pipeline will turbo-charge growth.
Eriel Deranger of the Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation understands the booming industry brings modern conveniences. It also brings, she says, modern problems threatening the forest and wildlife that are still part of the First Nations culture and have been for centuries.
"There has to be a balance, and respect for human - fundamental human rights and the rights to human subsistence and survivals. What we're seeing is that balance is out of whack here in Alberta. I think we're seeing development take precedence over the preservation of peoples and people's basic right to human survival," she said.
At the Pembina Institute, an environmental think tank, the focus is about carbon dioxide.? If things continue the way they are, says Jennifer Grant, Pembina's Oil Sands director, Canada will not meet its goals to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
"Right now between 2005 and 2020, we're expecting 67 million tons of reductions from other sectors in Canada's economy.? During that same timeframe we're expected to see 72 million tons oil sands greenhouse gas emissions growth," Grant said.
Todd Korol / REUTERS file
Oil, steam and natural gas pipelines run through the forest at the Cenovus Foster Creek SAGD oil sands operations near Cold Lake, Alberta, in a July 9, 2012, photo.
Aware of the concerns in Canada and in the U.S. about climate change,?the industry is quick to point out it has reduced carbon emissions intensity ? that is, the emissions created per barrel ??26 percent from 1990 to 2009. But overall emissions are still growing because of increases in production. Shell hopes to have the ability to capture some of the carbon emissions at one of its facilities by 2015.
But there is no perfect way to extract oil. Cenovus, a Canadian company which drills for oil, uses natural gas to make steam. Al Reid, vice president of Cenovus' Christina Lake operation, says reducing the amount of natural gas it burns shrinks the carbon footprint and helps the bottom line. But he admits there's only so much they can do.
"With today's technology, we will not get emissions down to zero. Can we continue to decrease them? I think that's very possible and that's something that we work on every single day," he said. "And over time there may be a technology that allows us to do that but we don't have that technology today."
There's no question the debate in the US over Keystone is having an impact in Canada. This month, Alberta's government floated the idea of raising its price on carbon to force the industry to do more to reduce emissions. Will that be enough to convince President Barack Obama to approve a pipeline that carries oil with a bigger carbon footprint?
It's not just the environment. There are issues of energy security and economic impact. The State Department says the extension would provide 3,900 construction jobs over a? 1 to 2 year period? and another 38,200 positions associated with the construction over the same time frame.? Once built it says the pipeline would create 35 permanent jobs and 15 temporary ones, according to the government study released last month. It is multifaceted issue that will dominate discussion for months to come.
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We're still waiting to see Cox's next generation cable TV-to-mobile streaming app, but right now it's released a version of its existing Cox TV Connect app for Android. Available on iPads since the end of 2011 and on iPhone / iPod touch since the end of last year, it's finally made the trek to a "select" group of Android tablets, consisting of the Nexus 7 and Samsung Galaxy 2 / Galaxy Note slates. A support document also mentions Amazon's Kindle Fire family, however the app isn't in its store as of this posting. For those not familiar, it's a free app for subscribers that lets them watch a selection of live TV channels while connected to their home wireless network, and view listings anywhere. We'll be interested to see if the list of compatible (Android 4.0+) hardware grows quickly, or if users will need to wait for a port of the new app which adds personalization features tied into Cox's Trio DVR platform.
Filed under: Home Entertainment, Tablets, HD
Source: Google Play, Cox TV Communications (Twitter)
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The IRS refuses to deny whether its Criminal Tax Division rummages through suspected tax dodgers’ emails without a warrant. In response to the American Civil Liberties Union request for its privacy policy, the IRS dumped 247 records, revealing that the agency definitely believed it could access emails without a warrant before a court deemed the practice illegal. The agency is conspicuously silent on whether it still applies those old spying rules. “The Fourth Amendment does not protect communications held in electronic storage, such as email messages stored on a server, because internet users do not have a reasonable expectation of privacy in such communication,” wrote IRS Criminal Tax Division?s Office of Chief Counsel in 2009. Under a law widely acknowledged as an antiquated privacy law called the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA), governments can access emails opened or older than 180 days without a search warrant. The giant loophole was responsible for the notorious resignation of General David Petraeus after the FBI gained access to his mistress’ incriminating emails. Recognizing that people now regularly store email in the cloud indefinitely, a federal court in U.S. v. Warshak needed probable cause to compel a company like Google to hand over access. Here’s the kicker: The IRS won’t say whether it now applies the privacy protections in Warshak to its investigations. Sometimes, what isn’t said can mean more than what is.Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/yVASKYVlx-I/
WASHINGTON (AP) ? Federal accident investigators said Tuesday that texting by the pilot of a medical helicopter contributed to a crash that killed four people, and they issued a safety alert cautioning pilots against use of cellphones and other distracting advices during "safety-critical" operations on the ground and in flight.
The five-member National Transportation Safety Board unanimously agreed that the crash was caused by a distracted and fatigued pilot who skipped preflight safety checks that would have revealed the helicopter was low on fuel and then, after discovering his situation, decided to proceed with the fatal last leg of the flight.
The case "juxtaposes old issues of pilot decision making with a 21st century twist: distractions from portable electronic devices," said National Transportation Safety Board Chairman Deborah Hersman.
The helicopter crashed into a farm field on Aug. 26, 2011, near Mosby, Mo., a little over a mile short of an airport where the pilot planned to refuel. The pilot, a patient being transported from one hospital to another, a flight nurse and a flight paramedic were killed.
The case is the first fatal commercial aircraft accident investigated by the board in which texting has been implicated. It underscores the board's worries that cellphones and other distracting devices are a growing factor in incidents across all modes of transportation ? planes, trains, cars, trucks and ships.
The pilot, James Freudenbert, 34, of Rapid City, S.D., exchanged 20 text messages, over a span of less than two hours preceding the helicopter crash, documents made public by NTSB show. Most of the messaging was with an off-duty female co-worker with whom he had a "long history" of "frequent, intensive communications," and with whom he was planning to have dinner that night, said Bill Bramble, an NTSB expert on pilot psychology.
Freudenbert missed several opportunities to see that the helicopter was low on fuel before he began the first leg of the mission, including apparently failing to conduct a pre-flight check and to look at the craft's fuel gauge, NTSB staff said.
Three of the messages were sent and five were received while the helicopter was in flight, although not in the final 11 minutes before it crashed, according to a timeline.
Freudenbert also exchanged text messages as he was reporting by radio to a company communications center that the helicopter was low on fuel. The helicopter was on the ground at the time waiting for the patient, who was being transferred from one hospital to another, and a nurse and a paramedic to board.
Although the pilot wasn't texting at the time of the crash, it's possible the messaging took his mind off his duties and caused him to skip safety steps he might have otherwise performed, said experts on human performance and cognitive distractions. People can't concentrate on two things at once; they can only shift their attention rapidly back and forth, the experts said. But as they do that, the sharpness of their focus begins to erode.
"People just have a limited ability to pay attention," said David Strayer, a professor of cognitive and neural science at the University of Utah. "It's one of the characteristics of how we are wired."
"If we have two things demanding attention, one will take attention away from other," he said. "If it happens while sitting behind a desk, it's not that big of a problem. But if you are sitting behind the wheel of a car or in the cockpit of an airplane, you start to get serious compromises in safety."
In October 2010, two Northwest Airlines pilots overflew their destination of Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport by 100 miles while they were engrossed in working on flight schedules on their laptops.
A text message ? especially one accompanied by an audible alert like a buzz or bell ? interrupts a person's thoughts and can be hard to ignore, said Christopher Wickens, a University of Illinois professor emeritus of engineering and aviation psychology. If the subject of the email is especially engaging, or especially emotional, that also makes it hard to ignore, he said.
The helicopter was operated by a subsidiary of Air Methods Corp. of Englewood, Colo., the largest provider of air medical emergency transport services in the U.S. The company's policies prohibit the use of electronic devices by pilots during flight.
Freudenbert apparently didn't check the amount of fuel on board the helicopter before taking off from the company's base in St. Joseph, Mo., even though he had been briefed that the aircraft would be low because it had been used the night before for training exercises. He radioed that he had two hours of fuel shortly after the helicopter was airborne.
But when the helicopter landed less than 10 minutes later in Bethany, Mo., to pick up the patient, Freudenbert radioed the communications center again to report that the copter was lower on fuel than he had initially thought. He estimated he had about 45 minutes worth of fuel, which investigators said they believe was a lie intended to cover up his earlier omissions. In fact, the helicopter had 30 minutes of fuel left, they said. Federal Aviation Administration regulations require 20 minutes of reserve fuel at all times.
Freudenbert opted to continue the patient transfer to a hospital in Liberty, Mo., changing plans only enough for a stop at an airfield 32 minutes away for fuel. The helicopter stalled and crashed about a mile from the airfield. A low fuel warning light might have alerted Freudenbert to his true situation, but the light was set on "dim" for nighttime use and may not have been visible. A pre-flight check by the pilot, if it had been conducted, should have revealed the light was set in the wrong position, investigators said.
___
Follow Joan Lowy on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/AP_Joan_Lowy
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/ntsb-pilots-texting-contributed-copter-crash-163647807--finance.html
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