Technology

OVER a million of France's poorest citizens are to get access to broadband computing services for one euro (69p) per day.

Prime minister Dominique de Villepin announced his E1-a-day plan to close France's digital divide at a meeting of the Interministerial Committee for the Information Society. De Villepin intends to provide financial incentives for internet service providers such as France Telecom and Iliad, to offer broadband internet connection for ?15 a month or less with a low-cost PC and home tuition.

A whole new world opened up for Tommy Craig as he tested a new handheld device for the blind that converts print to audio.

Craig was able to "read" everything from menus to cooking directions by positioning the reader over print and taking a picture. In seconds, the device's synthetic voice read the printed message to him.

"The reader provides access to materials that a lot of times you just didn't read," said Craig, 51, of Austin, Texas, who was one of about 500 blind people who tested the device over the past few months. "It certainly makes you more independent."

A raised eyebrow, quizzical look or a nod of the head are just a few of the facial expressions computers could soon be using to read people's minds.

An "emotionally aware" computer being developed by British and American scientists will be able to read an individual's thoughts by analyzing a combination of facial movements that represent underlying feelings.

"The system we have developed allows a wide range of mental states to be identified just by pointing a video camera at someone," said Professor Peter Robinson, of the University of Cambridge in England.

For years, the U.S. military has wanted a plane that could loiter just outside enemy territory for more than a dozen hours and, on command, hurtle toward a target faster than the speed of sound. And then level it.

But aircraft that excel at subsonic flight are inefficient at Mach speeds, and vice versa. The answer is Switchblade, an unmanned, shape-changing plane concept under development by Northrop Grumman.

Thai-made Rescue Robots have emerged as the champions of the World RoboCup Rescue 2006 competition, beating other competitors by a wide margin. The robots from the Independent Team, the only Thai team in this international contest's Rescue category, earned a score of 109 in the final round while the first runner up was way behind with about 80.

Held in Germany's Bremen, the competition attracted 22 teams from various countries including the United States, Japan and South Korea.

Celcom (M) Bhd will expand its third-generation (3G) coverage to the whole nation by mid-July, said chief executive officer Datuk Shazalli Ramly.

He said by expanding the scope of the company's 3G services to other parts of the country, Celcom hoped to expose Malaysians to its full capabilities and, in turn, boost the take-up rate of 3G.

?As of right now, certain areas are still undergoing testing, but Celcom 3G would be commercially available to all Malaysians on July 15,? he said at a media briefing yesterday.

The governor of Texas wants to turn all the world into a virtual posse.

Rick Perry has announced a $5 million plan to install hundreds of night-vision cameras on private land along the Mexican border and put the live video on the Internet, so that anyone with a computer who spots illegal immigrants trying to slip across can report it on a toll-free hot line.

"I look at this as not different from the neighborhood watches we have had in our communities for years and years," Perry said last week.

Some say it is a dangerous idea and a waste of money.

The most dated aspect of “The Net,” the 1995 thriller in which freelance software engineer Sandra Bullock’s entire life is erased by malicious corporate hackers, is not the dial-up accounts, or the floppy discs sent via Fed-Ex, or the almost nostalgia-inducing TCP/IP status windows which tell us: “Router engaged... Establishing link... Connecting... DONE.” No, the most dated aspect is a verb. Trying to fathom how the bad guys discovered such personal information about her — favorite foods and movies and men — Angela Bennett (Bullock) suddenly has an epiphany.

BlackBerry addicts have a crack at freedom when they check into one Chicago hotel: the manager will put the communications devices and others like them under lock and key for guests who want a break.

Rick Ueno, general manager of the Sheraton Chicago Hotel, said the program that began on Wednesday grew out of his own personal BlackBerry addiction. His one-step recovery was switching to a regular cell phone.

Researcher David Baker believes the key to an AIDS vaccine or a cure for cancer may be that old PC sitting under a layer of dust in your closet or the one on your desk doing little else but running a screen saver.

Those outdated or idle computers may be just what Baker needs to turn his ideas into scientific breakthroughs.

Baker, 43, a professor of biochemistry at the University of Washington, realized about two years ago that he didn't have access to the computing horsepower needed for his research -- nor the money to buy time on supercomputers elsewhere.