Taking a Wider View
Acer has brought to market its 22-inch AL2216Wbd wide-screen flat panel display. The latest addition to Acer’s Value line of LCDs, the multi-functional AL2216Wbd display is ideal for multimedia, gaming and video applications.
With 300 cd/m2 (candela per square meter) of brightness, a five millisecond response time, 700:1 contrast ratio, native 1680x1050 resolution, 16.2 million display colors and both digital (DVI) and analog signals, the AL2216Wbd LCD delivers clear motion video with vibrant images. Performance is further enhanced with an ergonomic design that features clean, minimal borders with adjustable tilt and 170 degree horizontal and 160 degree vertical viewing angles. The Acer AL2216Wbd is priced at $399.
Speak Up Without Letting Anyone Know
The Suggestion Box, Inc. (www.TheAnonymousEmail.com) has applied for a patent on its anonymous SMS (Short Message Service) system. The anonymous SMS system allows subscribers to send anonymous text messages to cell phones and other text message receivers. The patent filing covers TheSuggestionBox’s advanced technology that allows text message recipients to reply back to the anonymous sender, and still maintain the sender’s anonymity. The system will be available to TheAnonymousEmail.com subscribers in the next few weeks.
TheAnonymousEmail.com is a website dedicated to allowing e-mails to be sent untraceable and anonymously. Individual subscribers pay an annual fee of $19.95 in order to send e-mails anonymously through the site and receive replies back, with the sender remaining anonymous. Corporations, schools and other organizations are also using the site to enable anonymous reporting to them of criminal activity and other undesirable behavior.
First Responders’ Essential Gear
It looks like futuristic hiking gear. Instead, Evac-Pack, in development at the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology (Calit2) at UC Irvine, contains high-tech tools that one day may save lives in the urban jungle. The wearable, wireless, multimodal communication system allows first-responders in emergency evacuations to maintain constant two-way communications with an operations center.
The GPS/Bluetooth-equipped apparatus consists of a backpack-transported computer, video camera, wearable keyboard and wireless mouse. An eyeglass-mounted visual display, and full-duplex audio microphone and earpiece allow updated real-time situation awareness. A sensor detects and communicates levels of dangerous gases present in an environment, while an avionics-designed helmet incorporates compass, accelerometer and thermometer to transmit images and data to the control center.
In wired “smart buildings,” instrumented with an 802.11 network layer, the system can “push” a map of each floor into the wearer’s eyepiece, with blue dots indicating occupied rooms. This saves valuable time by eliminating unnecessary room-to-room searches.
Evac-Pack was conceived and developed for a US National Science Foundation-funded research project called ResCUE — Responding to Crises and Unexpected Events. Principal investigator Sharad Mehrotra, UCI professor of computer science systems, conceived the apparatus, while Chris Davison, the project’s test-bed technology manager, assembled it using off-the-shelf components.
