NEW TECHNOLOGY

Sony is moving from taking biometrics from the surface of the finger to using internal finger veins with a new authentication technology that could appear in mobile devices within a year.

The compact, camera-based system, called Mofiria, uses a CMOS sensor to capture light scattered diagonally through finger veins. Data from the pattern is compressed, making it possible for the information to be stored on gadgets such as laptops or mobile phones.

Sony says vein-authentication technology achieves higher accuracy and produces faster reads than other biometric authentication techniques, such as fingerprint or retinal scans. Finger-vein patterns differ from person to person and finger to finger, Sony noted, and do not change over the years. Also, unlike passwords, they do not need to be remembered.

Sony says false rejection rate for the system is less than 0.1 percent and processing time for identification takes only about 0.015 seconds using a personal computer CPU and about 0.25 seconds using a mobile-phone CPU.

Last year, Fujitsu introduced a palm-reading mouse that scans veins rather than fingertips — a method the company also claims is faster and more effective.

Meanwhile, Hitachi has been working on bringing its vein-authentication technology to steering wheels, fitting them with a biometric reader that only starts the engine for drivers with recognisable vein patterns. The system is used already in ATMs, computers and cardless-payment systems.

BlackBerry devices and iPhones may be gracing the pockets of the relative few today, but the market for high-end mobiles is set for serious expansion thanks to the popularity of Web 2.0 apps such as Facebook and Twitter.

A report by Juniper Research is predicting annual sales of smartphones will swell to 300 million by 2013 — up from about 153 million last year, a rise of around 95 percent.

By 2013, the analyst believes 23 percent of all new mobile phones will be smartphones — up from 13 percent in 2008.

The figures stand in stark contrast to overall mobile shipments, which grew by only five to six percent at best in 2008, and manufacturers are forecasting a decline of up to 10 percent or more in 2009. With this in mind, vendors are increasingly eyeing up service provision — from the likes of music libraries to location-based social networking — to create new revenue.

Rising demand for "complex Web 2.0-centric applications" is also broadening the appeal of smartphones and attracting prospective users into the mass market.

Juniper report author Andrew Kitson said smartphones are well on the way to becoming "internet-centric, highly personalised mobile computers", and software and content — not hardware — are therefore the key smartphone battlegrounds in the years ahead.

However, the iPhone and its ilk are not the only gadgets capable of fulfilling consumer thirst for Facebook on the go. Netbooks have emerged in recent years as an alternative mobile internet device and shipments are set for massive growth over the next five years.

A recent report by analyst house ABI Research forecasts netbook shipments will rise to 139 million in 2013, up from almost 35 million in 2009 — an increase of nearly 400 percent.

While there will still be almost double the amount of smartphones as netbooks in the market by 2013, netbooks are the new kids on the block, with a growth rate to prove it.

ABI Research practice director, Kevin Burden, said in a statement: "Smartphones did a lot to raise our comfort level with mobile technology as well as our expectations for how connected we could be and how accessible information and data should be while on the road. Enter the netbook with its lightweight, medium-sized form factor and low-cost processors leading to moderate overall price points [which] may finally have 'right-sized' mobile technology for productive travels."

Burden added: "In recent years, the industry still expected the smartphones to be more than they turned out to be, and most recently, MIDs [mobile internet devices] were thought to be the next big mobile devices segment but an unclear usage model continues to confuse the market. So today, netbooks' time has come, and ABI research expects them to enjoy very strong market growth."

User Account Control (UAC) – quick update

There’s been a ton of interest in how we have improved user account control (UAC) and so we thought we’d offer a quick update for folks. We know most of you have discovered this and picked a setting that works for you, and we're happy with the feedback we've seen. This just goes into the details on the choice of defaults. --Steven

In an earlier blog post we discussed the why of UAC and its implications for Windows, the ecosystem, and our customers. We also talked about what we needed to do moving forward to address the data and feedback we’ve received. This blog post will provide additional detail on our response and what you can expect to see in the upcoming beta build in early 2009.

As mentioned in our previous post, and your comments supported this, the goals for UAC are good and important ones. User Account Control was created with the intention of putting you in control of your system, reducing cost of ownership over time, and improving the software ecosystem. It is important not to abandon these goals. Instead, we want to address feedback we’ve received and build on the telemetry we have using those to improve the overall experience without losing sight of the goals with which we agree.

For those of you using 6801 you have started to see the benefits of prompt reduction and our new and improved dialog designs. You also have seen our efforts to give the user greater control of their system – the new UAC Control Panel. The administrator now has more control over the level of notification received from UAC. Look for the UAC Control Panel to appear in Start Search, Action Center, Getting Started, and even directly from the UAC prompt itself. Of course, the familiar ways to access it from Vista are still present.

Figure 1: UAC Control Panel

The UAC Control Panel enables you to choose between four different settings:

1. Always notify on every system change. This is Vista behavior – a UAC prompt will result when any system-level change is made (Windows settings, software installation, etc.)
2. Notify me only when programs try to make changes to my computer. This setting does not prompt when you change Windows settings, such as control panel and administration tasks.
3. Notify me only when programs try to make changes to my computer, without using the Secure Desktop. This is the same as #2, but the UAC prompt appears on the normal desktop instead of the Secure Desktop. While this is useful for certain video drivers which make the desktop switch slowly, note that the Secure Desktop is a barrier to software that might try to spoof your response.
4. Never notify. This turns off UAC altogether.

We know from the feedback we’ve received that our customers are looking for a better balance of control versus the amount of notifications they see. As we mentioned in our last post we have a large number of admin (aka developer) customers looking for this balance, our data shows us that most machines (75%) run with a single account with full admin privileges.

Figure 2. Percentage of machines (server excluded) with one or more user accounts from January 2008 to June 2008.

For the in-box default, we are focusing on these customers, and we have chosen number 2, “Notify me only when programs try to make changes to my computer”. This setting does not prompt when you change Windows settings (control panels, etc.), but instead enables you to focus on administrative changes being requested by non-Windows applications (like installing new software). For people who want greater control in changing Windows settings frequently, without the additional notifications, this setting results in fewer overall prompts and enables customers to zero in on the key remaining notifications that they do see.

This default setting provides the right degree of change notification that a broad range of customers’ desire. At the same time we’ve made it easy and readily discoverable for the administrator to adjust the setting to provide more or fewer notifications via the new control panel (and policy). As with all of our default choices we will continue to closely monitor the feedback and data that come in through beta before finalizing for ship.

--UAC, Kernel, and Security program managers

Photos of Audi's third coupe in 12 months have been released prior to next week's Geneva Motor Show, when it will be officially unveiled. Aimed squarely at the Mercedes-Benz CLK and BMW 3 Series Coupe, the Audi A5 is a four-seat coupe based on a new platform - not just a hardtop A4 Cabriolet.

The A5 combines the sweeping lower side-feature from the TT and A6, and softer version of the shoulder theme from the R8. The DLO has a hint of Mercedes-Benz, with a break at the rear rather than the traditional Audi flowing line. A wide range of engines producing between 170 and 265PS will be available from launch, including diesel options. Though a 344PS S5 has also been announced, we will be crossing our fingers for an RS5 with bigger arches and wider stance to complement the bold bodyside character line.

Related stories:
Audi R8 - Paris Motor Show 2006
Audi TT - New York Auto Show 2006
Audi Nuvolari quattro concept - Geneva 2003

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