NewsScan Daily, 14 September 2004 ("Above The Fold")

NewsScan Daily, 14 September 2004 ("Above The Fold")
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"ABOVE THE FOLD"
        IBM Gives Speech Recognition Code to Open Source Groups
        Heat Up Your Own Hotspot
        Canon, Toshiba Team Up on Flat Panel Displays
        Report: Young Cyber-Bullies a Menace in Singapore
        These Plants Give Off Good Vibrations

FEATURES
        Flash Card
        Honorary Subscriber: Dorothea Lange

IBM GIVES SPEECH RECOGNITION CODE TO OPEN SOURCE GROUPS
      In a shrewd move intended to outmaneuver rivals, IBM is contributing 
some of its proprietary speech-recognition software to two open source 
groups. One application that handles basic words for dates, time and 
locations will go to the Apache Software Foundation, and another that 
targets speech-editing will be donated to the Eclipse Foundation. "We're 
trying to spur the industry around open standards to get more and more 
speech application development," says IBM senior VP Steven Mills. "Our code 
contribution is about getting that ecosystem going." The move reflects 
IBM's strategy to broaden its software business opportunities by giving 
away various pieces of code to open source software developers. IBM has 
been an avid support of open-source projects like the Apache Web server and 
the Linux operating system and last month it contributed Cloudscape, a 
database written in Java, to the Apache Foundation. "This whole speech 
world is going in the same direction as the rest of the information 
technology industry, and that would drastically reduce the cost of building 
speech applications," says one market research analyst. (New York Times 13 
Sep 2004)
<http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/13/technology/13speech.html>

HEAT UP YOUR OWN HOTSPOT
      Companies like Netgear, D-Link and SMC Networks are offering a wave 
of new products that enable mobile laptop users to set up their own 
personal temporary Wi-Fi hotspots while on the road, giving them wireless 
access to high-speed Internet connections. These inexpensive gadgets -- 
slightly larger than a deck of cards -- plug into any available high-speed 
wire connection, such as one might find in a hotel room or a dorm room, and 
create an instant mini hotspot that extends several dozen feet and can 
accommodate multiple users. The devices are not intended to replace 
stand-alone Wi-Fi kits, which have a range of at least 160 feet. (Wall 
Street Journal 14 Sep 2004)
<http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB109511448945316713,00.html> (sub req'd)

CANON, TOSHIBA TEAM UP ON FLAT PANEL DISPLAYS
      Japanese technology giants Canon and Toshiba are pumping $1.8 billion 
into a joint venture to manufacture next-generation SED (surface conduction 
electron emitter display) panels, initially targeting the large-screen 
flat-panel TV market. They are the only major companies developing SED 
panels, which are thinner than existing LCD panels, consume less energy, 
and do not require backlighting because they produce their own light. 
Toshiba already sells TVs with LCD and plasma displays and Canon says it 
will sell Toshiba-made SED televisions under its own brand. The companies 
say they expect their joint venture to become profitable by 2010. A recent 
survey by DisplaySearch estimates that the market for flat-screen displays 
will jump to $97 billion in 2008, up from $43 billion in 2003. 
(Reuters/CNet 14 Sep 2004)
<http://news.com.com/2100-1041-5365469.html>

REPORT: YOUNG CYBER-BULLIES A MENACE IN SINGAPORE
      High-tech Singapore has the highest incidence of bullying among 
children via the Internet of any country outside the United States, 
according to a report by Internet ethics group Wired Safety. Insults and 
pornographic images are the preferred form of harassment among the 
city-state's technology-savvy students, most of whom have Internet access 
at home or in highly-computerized government schools. In response, 
Singapore has launched a campaign to discourage mean behavior among its 
students, who are already stressed by an extremely competitive educational 
system which the government is now trying to reform. "Having been to 
Singapore and seen how well-behaved the children are, the results came as 
quite a shock," says Wired Safety executive director Parry Aftab. 
"Singapore has far more cases than anyone would have expected." Wired 
Safety, which monitors 76 countries, said that as a proportion of the 
population, it has received far more reports of "cyber-bullying" from 
Singapore than any country outside the U.S., with 80 reports so far this 
year. (The Age 13 Sep 2004) rec'd from John Lamp, Deakin U.
<http://theage.com.au/articles/2004/09/13/1094927491121.html>

THESE PLANTS GIVE OFF GOOD VIBRATIONS
      A Japanese telecommunications equipment maker has come up with a 
tricky way to hide audio speakers. The Ka-on, which means "flower sound" in 
Japanese, consists of a donut-shaped magnet and coil at the base of a vase 
that can be hooked up to a CD player, stereo or television set. When 
flowers are placed in the vase, the sound vibrations move up through the 
stems into the petals and leaves, filling the entire room with gentle 
music. Masumi Gotoh, president of Let's Corp, which makes the Ka-On, says 
the gadget is ideal for piping music via flower arrangements at weddings, 
reception desks and restaurants. The vases and amplifiers come in several 
sizes, priced from $46 to $460, and Gotoh says the device has an added 
bonus -- the vibrations discourage insects and make the flowers last 
longer. "The plant is happy listening to the music. Gerberas and sunflowers 
work especially well as speakers." (AP 14 Sep 2004)
<http://apnews.excite.com/article/20040914/D853EMN80.html>

*****

FLASH CARD
      "One should really use the camera as though tomorrow you'd be 
stricken blind." (Dorothea Lange)

HONORARY SUBSCRIBER: DOROTHEA LANGE
      Today's Honorary Subscriber is the American documentary photographer 
Dorothea Lange (1895-1965), whose studies of the victims of the Great 
Depression of the 1930s greatly influenced later documentary and 
journalistic photographers.
      In the 1930s Lange was selected by the state of California and later 
by the federal Farm Security Administration to make a pictorial record of 
the migration of farm people from the Dust Bowl of the Great Plains region, 
especially the "Okies" from the state of Oklahoma. To get the pictures she 
needed, she joined the migratory workers and lived with them in their camps 
for considerable periods of time. In 1939, together with her husband, Paul 
S. Taylor, she published a collection of her photographs in "An American 
Exodus: A Record of Human Erosion." Her now famous 1936 portrait, "Migrant 
Mother, Nipomo, California," hangs in the Library of Congress, and in 1960 
it was selected by a University of Missouri panel as one of the 50 best 
photographs of the preceding half-century.
      Lange was born in Hoboken, New Jersey, in 1895. She first studied at 
the New York Training School for Teachers, but then decided to pursue her 
interest in photography by joining the Photo-Secession group, at Columbia 
University, where she studied under the photographer Clarence White. At age 
20 she decided to travel around the world, earning money as she went by 
selling her photographs. She was in San Francisco when her money ran out, 
so in 1916 she settled there, opened a portrait studio, and began the 
career that would establish her as a creative portrait photographer of the 
first rank.
      When the Great Depression came, Lange began photographing the 
homeless men who wandered the streets, capturing their hopeless condition 
in such pictures as her 1932 "White Angel Breadline." The recognition she 
received from these photographs resulted in her being hired by the federal 
Resettlement Administration (later called the Farm Security Administration) 
to bring the conditions of the poor to public attention. Her photographs of 
migrant workers, which she captioned with the workers' own words, were 
partly responsible for moving the government to create relief programs and 
establish camps for the migrants.
      By 1934 Lange had earned the solid reputation that made her first 
exhibition a success. Two years after the 1939 publication of her photo 
collection of migrant workers, she received a Guggenheim fellowship that 
she would shortly give up to make a photographic record of the post Pearl 
Harbor mass evacuation of Japanese-Americans to detention camps. After 
World War II, she did a number of photo-essays for Life magazine, including 
life in California, in Mormon towns and villages, as well as other subjects 
photographed in Asia, Egypt, Ireland, and South America. Her reputation 
grew in these later years despite long periods of inactivity because of 
illness.
      In 1965 she died in San Francisco, and in the following year her 
memory was honored by a retrospective show at the Museum of Modern Art in 
New York.

See http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0893818356/newsscancom/ref=nosim 
for "Dorothea Lange: Photographs of a Lifetime" -- or look for it in your 
favorite library. Note: We donate all revenue from our book and media 
recommendations to adult literacy programs.

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