Could 'Earthscraper' turn architecture on its head?

A team of Mexican architects have designed a 65-story glass and steel pyramid to sit in the middle of Mexico City's most historic plaza. But, if it ever gets built, you won't see it anywhere on the skyline.

That's because it would be the world's first ever "earthscraper" -- a 300-meter deep office and living space with ambitions to turn the modern high-rise, quite literally, on its head.

"There is very little room for any more buildings in Mexico City, and the law says we cannot go above eight stories, so the only way is down" explains Esteban Suarez, co-founder of BNKR Arquitectura, the firm behind the proposals.

"This would be a practical way of conserving the built environment while creating much-needed new space for commerce and living," he added.

But would it really be that practical? The design, which would cost an estimated $800 million to build, is the shape of an inverted pyramid with a central void to allow for some much-needed natural light and ventilation.

Suarez says the first 10 stories would hold a museum dedicated to the city's history and its artifacts. "We'd almost certainly find plenty of interesting relics during the dig -- dating right back to the Aztecs who built their own pyramids here," he says.

The following 10 floors are assigned to retail and housing, with the remaining 35 intended for commercial office space, says Suarez.

Suarez concedes that getting natural light and fresh air down to the lower floors will be a problem and he is investigating a "system of fiber optics" that could deliver sunlight from the surface.
The design also includes a series of a series of "earth lobbies" that would store plants and trees with the intention of improving air-quality and, no doubt, the gloomy subterranean landscape.

Suarez says renewable energy could be generated by a turbine powered from collected groundwater. Enough to keep the lights on in an underground office block 24 hours a day? "I couldn't say at this stage" replies Suarez.

But although it has the hallmarks of a fossil-fuel guzzling Goliath -- and a name to match -- Suarez says the "Earthscraper" has great eco-credentials. "In many ways, this project is all about the environment -- not just in how we preserve our historic skyline, but how we prevent the serious problem of urban sprawl into the countryside," he says.

According to the 32-year-old architect, Mexico City's main square -- commonly known as the "Zocalo" -- is one of the biggest city plazas in the world. "It's a massive empty plot, which makes it the ideal site for our program," he said.

To conserve the numerous activities that take place on the 190,000 square-foot plaza throughout the year -- including concerts, protests, open-air exhibitions and military parades -- the void will be covered with a glass floor that Suarez believes will allow the life of the "Earthscraper" to blend with everything happening on top.

At present, Suarez and his team are in the process of presenting their idea to the local authorities. So, if you were in their shoes, what would you say? Is the "Earthscraper" a genuinely feasible innovation or a pretty but impractical pipe dream? Tell us you thoughts in the comments section below.

A Massive hack hit 760 companies

A massive cyberattack that led to a vulnerability in RSA's SecurID tags earlier this year also victimized Google, Facebook, Microsoft and many other big-named companies, according to a new analysis released this week.

A list of 760 organizations that were attacked was presented to Congress recently and published by security analyst Brian Krebs on his blog Monday.
The list is the first glimpse into the pervasiveness of the attack that brought RSA to its knees. Those in the security industry have long suspected that RSA was not the hack's only victim, but no other companies have been willing to talk publicly about whether they had also been compromised.

The names mentioned on Krebs' list include about a fifth of the Fortune 100, as well as many other massive corporations.
Abbot Laboratories , Charles Schwab , Freddie Mac, PriceWaterhouseCoopers and Wells Fargo  are all named.
Tech giants like Amazon , IBM , Intel , Yahoo , Cisco , Google , Facebook, and Microsoft  are also included, as well as government agencies like the European Space Agency, the IRS, and the General Services Administration. Government security contractor Northrop Grumman  was on the list, as was MIT.
The list of affected companies was obtained from a breached "command and control" server, the name for a machine that hackers use to direct the fleets of compromised PCs that they have gained control over. Krebs said he wasn't at liberty to reveal how that server was discovered or who analyzed the data.

The names came to light after researchers traced back the corporate networks that were communicating with the server that attacked RSA. The first victims started "phoning home" as early as November 2010, Krebs said.
But there's a big caveat: As Krebs was quick to note, many Internet service providers were on the list, most likely because their subscribers were attacked using their network, not because the companies themselves were compromised. That means that companies like Comcast , Windstream , Verizon , AT&T  and Sprint  may be off the hook.

The cost of cybercrime

But Google and Amazon, which host Domain Name System services to help people surf the Web, may also have made the list because of activity on their networks, not within their corporate walls. And some companies -- especially security technology vendors like McAfee -- could be named because they discovered the attack and intentionally compromised their own systems in an attempt to reverse-engineer the malware used in the hack.

One last footnote: It's not clear how deeply the hackers were able to penetrate each compromised business' systems. RSA got hammered -- the attackers used the breach to plant malware that let them gain access to RSA's systems -- but other companies may have fended off the intrusion without any damage.

Microsoft, one of the few companies we contacted that was willing to talk on the record about the attack, said it has "not seen any evidence supporting the claim." Several other companies gave similar statements but asked not to be named in this story.
Still, experts say the revelation of the massive number of companies involved in the attack shouldn't be taken lightly.

On his blog, Krebs noted that if this could happen to one of the largest and most integral security firms, organizations that aren't focused on security had little hope of fending it off, let alone discovering it.
"If my blog post does anything, it's to get people to pay attention to it," Krebs told CNNMoney.

The sheer number of corporations mentioned in the list proves that no one is safe from attack.
"The only companies that haven't been compromised in some way, shape, or form are either insanely small, lucky or secure," said Dave Jevans, chairman of Ironkey, maker of a security-focused Web browser.
Hacks are almost a form of currency in the cybercrime economy. Hackers launch cyberattacks on as many victims as they can in order to sell their access to interested third parties.

For instance, a hack of MIT's network may not be valuable to anyone right now. But if the university were to do something to rattle, say, Anonymous in a year or two, hacktivists could go on underground channels and attempt to buy access to MIT's compromised systems.
That's why these hacks are called "advanced persistent threats." They often carry on for years without anyone knowing.

RSA came forward in March and admitted that it had been hacked, even though it likely didn't have to: regulations about public disclosure vary from state to state, and tend only to force companies to disclose hacks when customer data is revealed.

Companies don't like admitting that they've been compromised, but the fact that no other company spoke up about this attack is not necessarily indicative of secrecy.
"I'm sure 90% of these companies are just finding out they've been hacked along with the rest of us," Jevans said. "They don't even know they've been penetrated."
It's not uncommon for companies to be unaware of attacks.

In August, McAfee uncovered a wide-ranging, global cyber attack that impacted 72 organizations. The security company noted that the attack had been going on, undetected, for the five years. McAfee actually discovered the attack when the hackers finally made a mistake: They left logs of their attacks on a command and control server that McAfee uncovered in 2009.

Steve Jobs bio: The best tidbits

"Steve Jobs,' the biography of the late tech visionary that went on sale Monday, has already produced plenty of headlines: How Jobs met his birth father without knowing who he was, how he swore bitter revenge on Google for developing its competing Android system, and how he waited too long after his cancer diagnosis to get surgery that might have saved him.

But the 656-page book by hand-picked biographer Walter Isaacson also contains a wealth of smaller, but no less telling, details about the brilliant but difficult Apple co-founder.

Taken together, they build an illuminating portrait of a charismatic, complicated figure who could inspire people one minute and demean them the next. Even on their own, many of these snippets are still fascinating glimpses into an extraordinary life.

The CNN Tech team has been busy flipping through our copies of the book. Here are some of the more interesting nuggets we've found, in chronological order (we're still reading, so we'll add more as we go):

Childhood and early years

-- Jobs' wife, Laurene Powell Jobs, encouraged Isaacson to be honest about Jobs' failings. "You shouldn't whitewash it," she told him. "He's good at spin, but he also has a remarkable story, and I'd like to see that it's all told truthfully."
-- Jobs' birth mother insisted he be adopted by college graduates. The couple who had initially agreed to adopt Jobs in 1955 -- a lawyer and his wife -- backed out because they wanted a girl. So Jobs was placed instead with Paul Jobs, a high school dropout and mechanic, and his wife, Clara, a bookkeeper. When Jobs' birth mother found out, she refused to sign the adoption papers for weeks and only relented after extracting a pledge that the Jobses fund a savings account to pay for the boy's college education.

-- Jobs saw his first computer terminal as a boy when his father brought him to a NASA research center not far from where the family lived. "I fell totally in love with it," he said.

-- Jobs' famous rebellious streak first manifested itself in elementary school, where he often pulled pranks and once set off an explosive under his teacher's chair. He felt bored at not being challenged by his studies. In fourth grade, he was tested and scored on a high-school sophomore level.

-- Jobs was introduced to Steve Wozniak in high school by a mutual friend, and despite their age difference (Wozniak was five years older), the two bonded over their love of electronics and practical jokes. "I was a little more mature than my years, and he was a little less mature than his, so it evened out," Jobs said.

-- Jobs and Wozniak built a "Blue Box," a device that allowed them to make long-distance calls for free by fooling the networks' routing switches. The two pranksters used the box to call the Vatican, with Wozniak pretending to be Henry Kissinger and asking to speak to the pope. They spoke to several Vatican officials but never actually got the pope on the line.

-- Although it was private and more expensive than his parents could afford, Jobs insisted on applying to Reed College in Portland, Oregon. His parents drove him to the school, but he refused to let them come on campus or even to say goodbye to them. "It's one of the things in life I really feel ashamed about," Jobs said later. "I didn't want anyone to know I had parents. I wanted to be like an orphan. ..."

-- After Jobs dropped out of Reed, he talked his way into a $5-an-hour job at Atari, the video game company, because the chief engineer "saw something in him." Jobs believed at the time that his fruit- and vegetable-heavy diet would prevent body odor -- a theory that proved flawed. After Jobs' co-workers complained about his hygiene, the CEO asked him to work the night shift, where he would be alone.

-- Jobs quit Atari to go on a seven-month spiritual quest to India, where he contracted dysentery, had his long hair shaved off by a Hindu holy man and failed to find the inner calm he was seeking. His appearance changed so radically during his pilgrimage that his parents did not recognize him when they picked him up at the airport upon his return.

-- Jobs returned to Atari, where he and Wozniak collaborated on their first project: an early version of the hit video game "Breakout." But Jobs did not tell Wozniak they would be paid a bonus if they designed the game using fewer than 50 computer chips. Wozniak did it with 45 chips, but Jobs pocketed the entire bonus -- a fact his partner didn't find out for years. "I wish he had just been honest," Wozniak said later.

The origins of Apple

-- When it came time to name their new computer company, Jobs and Wozniak considered names like Matrix, Executek and Personal Computers Inc. before Jobs, who was eating a fruit diet and helping out at an apple farm, suggested Apple. "It sounded fun, spirited and not intimidating." he said. "Plus it would get us ahead of Atari in the phone book."

-- On April 1, 1976, Jobs, Wozniak and a third investor, former Atari engineer Ron Wayne, drew up the partnership agreement for Apple and began assembling computers in Jobs' parents garage. Wayne chipped in 10% but soon got cold feet and withdrew 11 days later. Had he stayed on, his stake at the end of 2010 would have been worth about $2.6 billion.

-- Jobs chose the Apple logo, an apple with a bite taken out of it, because he thought the other design option, a whole apple, looked too much like a cherry.

-- When it came time to assign employee badge numbers, Apple's first president, Mike Scott, gave Wozniak No. 1 and Jobs No. 2. Jobs was furious and demanded to be No. 1, but Scott refused. Finally, they reached a compromise: Jobs would be badge No. 0.

-- In Apple's early years, Jobs oversaw the hiring process and sought out applicants who were smart but somewhat rebellious. When one uptight candidate came in for an interview, Jobs began to toy with him, asking such offbeat questions as, "Are you a virgin?" and "How many times have you taken LSD?"

The Macintosh

-- When designing the Macintosh, Apple's engineers didn't trust the company Jobs had selected to build the computer's disk drive. So they went behind his back and asked Sony to get a disk drive ready. Sony sent a designer from Japan to Cupertino to oversee the secret project, but the Mac team made him hide in a closet every time Jobs came by.

-- On the day he unveiled the Macintosh in 1984, a reporter asked Jobs what kind of market research he had done on the product. Jobs scoffed and replied, "Did Alexander Graham Bell do any market research before he invented the telephone?"

-- Now a celebrity, Jobs brought several newly minted Macintoshes to New York City in early 1984. He gave one to John Lennon's 9-year-old son Sean at a party, where an enthralled Andy Warhol used the machine to draw a circle. At Warhol's suggestion, Jobs then took a computer to a baffled Mick Jagger, who didn't seem to know who Jobs was. When Jagger's young daughter Jade took to the machine immediately, Jobs gave it to her instead.

-- Jobs was impatient and in a bad mood one day in 1984 when a Bay Area policeman pulled him over for going more than 100 mph in a 55-mph zone. Although the cop warned him he'd go to jail if he was caught speeding again, Jobs honked at him and told him to hurry up writing the ticket. As soon as the cop left, Jobs immediately accelerated to 100 mph again. Said his companion at the time, "He absolutely believed that the normal rules didn't apply to him."

Leaving Apple for NeXT and Pixar

-- In 1985, fresh off his ouster as CEO of Apple, Jobs showcased his feisty side on a trip to the then-Soviet Union, where the Apple II was going on sale. First, in a meeting at the U.S. embassy in Moscow, he bristled at the suggestion that there were laws against sharing computer technology with the Soviets. Later, after praising Leon Trotsky, the Soviet revolutionary, Jobs was informed by the KGB agent escorting him that Trotsky was no longer considered "a great man." Jobs then went to deliver a speech to Russian computer students, one he began by heaping praise on Trotsky.

-- Jobs paid designer Paul Rand $100,000 to create a logo for his new computer company, NeXT. It went so well that Rand agreed to design a personal calling card for Jobs, which led to a "lengthy and heated disagreement" about the placement of the period after the "P" in "Steven P. Jobs." Rand placed it to the right of the "P." Jobs thought it should be nudged further left, under the "P's" curve. In the end, Jobs won.

-- An early backer of NeXT was Ross Perot, the billionaire Texan. He watched a PBS segment on Jobs and immediately called offering to invest. Jobs returned the call a week later. "I pick the jockeys, and the jockeys pick the horses and ride them," Perot told Jobs. "You guys are the ones I'm betting on, so you figure it out." Perot gave him $20 million.

-- Jobs and Microsoft's Bill Gates had an uneasy relationship. "Part of the problem," Isaacson writes, "was that the rival titans were congenitally unable to be deferential to each other." When Gates first visited NeXT headquarters in Palo Alto, Jobs kept him waiting 30 minutes, even though Gates could see through a glass wall that he was having casual conversations.

-- Digital animation was originally just to be a sideline for Pixar, the business Jobs bought from George Lucas for $5 million in 1985. The short movies' main purpose was to show off the hardware and software used to create them.

-- For a few years beginning in 1982, Jobs, then 27, was romantically involved with folk legend Joan Baez, who was 41. "He was both romantic and afraid to be romantic," she said.

-- In the early 1980s, Jobs, with the help of a private investigator, found his biological parents. But he would not contact his birth mother until after Clara Jobs, the woman who raised him, died in 1986. By contrast, Jobs had no interest in meeting his birth father, who he felt had abandoned his birth mother and sister. It would turn out that his birth father, Abdulfattah Jandali, owned a Syrian restaurant in Silicon Valley that Jobs had patronized several times, and that Jobs had met him.

-- After NeXT was bought by Apple, Jobs acted as de facto CEO until September 16, 1997, when he became "iCEO" -- an abbreviation that first signified "interim" but would eventually mean "indefinite."

Apple's rebound


-- When Apple unveiled iTunes and its innovative digital music store in 2001, Jim Allchin, who ran the Windows division for Microsoft then, sent an e-mail to four fellow executives saying: "We were smoked. How did they get the music companies to go along?" At the time, iTunes and the iPod only worked on Mac computers. Apple execs argued that the iPod should interface with Windows, too, and Jobs was alone in opposing that proposition. When he finally relented, he insisted that Apple make iTunes for Windows as well, so the company could control more of the experience.

-- At one point during the development of the iPod Mini, which was immensely popular and catapulted Apple's portable music players into the mainstream, Jobs considered killing the product because it was smaller in size and storage capacity, yet sold for the same price. He didn't quite understand the device's appeal among workout fiends because he didn't do sports.

-- During the creation of the iPod Shuffle, Apple engineers kept shrinking the device's screen in prototypes until Jobs had the idea to get rid of the screen altogether.

-- The only time Jobs could recall being tongue-tied was upon meeting one of his heroes, Bob Dylan, in 2004. Dylan invited Jobs to his hotel before a Bay Area concert, and they talked for two hours. Jobs was "really nervous" and afraid the aging Dylan would disappoint him, but "he was as sharp as a tack."

-- Jobs was the first person outside of U2 to get a pre-release copy of the band's 2004 album, "How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb." Bono wanted to be in an iPod commercial and wanted Apple to make a black iPod. Jobs told him, "We've tried other colors than white, and they don't work." He soon relented. Bono later compared Apple's creativity to that of a rock band, and said, "the lead singer is Steve Jobs."

-- Famed industrial designer Jony Ive was tasked with coming up with the successor to the candy-color translucent iMac, which was the bestselling desktop computer for some time. He wanted to develop a flat-screen monitor with the components integrated into the display unit. Jobs did not like that idea, and he invited Ive over to his backyard at home to brainstorm. The sunflowers in the garden maintained by Powell Jobs inspired the design of the iMac, which had a display connected to a dome base by a metal stem. When computer parts became compact enough a few years later, Ive's initial concept was used in the models that replaced the sunflower iMac.

-- Apple maintained two separate development teams working on cell-phone prototypes. P1 was a phone that looked like the classic iPod and included a track wheel. "It was cumbersome," said former Apple exec Tony Fadell. P2 was a touchscreen gadget, which in some prototypes had a physical keyboard, but more closely resembled the iPhone that we have today.

-- While in the hospital for a liver transplant in 2009, Jobs refused to wear a medical mask because he disliked the design. Barely able to speak, he demanded the doctors bring five options of masks so that he could choose the one that he liked best.

Siri, Iris and the dream of talking to our phones

The only scene I really loved in "Star Trek: The Voyage Home" was when Scotty tried speaking verbal commands to a Macintosh Plus. Keyboards always seem to get in the way of doing what I want to do -- and nowhere is this as apparent, or frustrating, as on smartphones and tablets.

With the recent launch of the iPhone 4S, Apple's not-really-new voice recognition system Siri has been getting a lot of attention.

Yet it took the India-based software company Dexetra just eight hours to create the initial version of Iris -- a blatant Android knockoff of Siri.

Even the name "Iris," which is the reverse of "Siri," stands for "Intelligent Rival Imitator of Siri" according to Dexetra's blog. (And yes, I'm just waiting for the trademark suit from Apple.)

Granted, Dexetra wasn't starting completely from scratch. This company had already been working on natural language processing and machine learning -- two notably thorny, complex technologies -- for more than a year.

A few days later, Dexetra made an improved version of Iris available as a free app in Google's Android Market and as of this writing it has been installed more than 50,000 times.
I put Iris on my Android phone this weekend, and it's amusing. For instance, here's a discussion I had with Iris yesterday:

Me: "What time is the John Scofield concert at Yoshi's Jazz Club in Oakland tonight?"

Iris: "I have no idea."

Me: "Who is John Scofield?"

Iris: "John Scofield, born 1951, the musician." (Shows a photo of Scofield performing.)

Me: "Where is Yoshi's, Oakland?"

Iris: "Right now being pulled in by a black hole."

So Iris is about as entertaining as Siri seems to be. (I don't own an iPhone, but for comparison I've been checking out the STSS Tumblr blog, a crowdsourced collection of weird and wonderful wisdom from Siri.)

Still, neither Iris nor Siri seems very useful so far.

Fortunately, there are better voice control options on both the iPhone and Android handsets than either Siri or Iris. And they've been around for a while.

For some time the Android mobile operating system has had pretty well integrated speech-to-text functionality (Google Voice Actions). I use this often for texting, searching, navigating and e-mailing on the go.

Also, whenever I bring up a keyboard in any Android app, there's a microphone option for voice entry. Generally it recognizes pretty well what I want to say or do. If Android guesses wrong, I can use the keyboard to correct it, and it does seem to learn over time.

Then there is Vlingo, a voice control app for all the major smartphone platforms. I've tried it, and for some tasks it works reasonably well.

On the iPhone, Siri does integrate with some of Apple's own productivity tools (such as the calendar). But as my CNN.com colleague Mark Milian pointed out, Siri can't yet execute many basic commands like taking a picture.

Most importantly, Siri doesn't integrate with any third-party iOS apps, such as Shazam or Tweetdeck. Given Apple's closed iOS ecosystem, it's an open question whether such integration will ever happen.

Besides Siri, there are other iOS apps and tools that provide some voice control. ExtremeTech recently published a list.

Such baby steps are important -- but on any mobile platform, we're still a long, long way from phones that you can just talk to and they'll do what you say.

This is frustrating from the consumer perspective. Smartphones are, first and foremost, phones. They're supposed to be for talking.

Typing on any mobile device, through a physical or virtual keyboard, is a chore. That's why QR codes are getting popular -- they eliminate the need to type on a mobile device.

The challenge of typing on handheld devices is exactly why the kind of voice control Scotty expected is such an alluring and intuitive idea. Eventually we'll probably get there.

Nokia unveils the first Windows smartphones

How do you say "here goes nothing" in Finnish?Nokia's  bet-the-company moment is now underway, as the Finnish mobile phone maker unveiled two new smartphones Wednesday that will run Microsoft's Windows Phone operating system -- the first Nokia devices to run anything but the company's own software platform.

The struggling handset manufacturer is hoping the major strategy shift will boost its flagging fortunes in the booming smartphone market.
The two new devices, dubbed Lumia 800 and Lumia 710, will go on sale in Europe next month and represent the company's attempt to gain traction in the market dominated by Apple's  iPhones and Google's  Android operating system.

But Nokia has not yet committed to selling the phones in the United States. The company said it would begin selling Windows Phone devices here in early 2012, but it's not clear whether it will be a Lumia or another yet-to-be-released device.
Nokia did say it would sell U.S. devices next year built for the CDMA network, which Verizon  and Sprint use, as well as the HSPA standard, used by AT&T  and T-Mobile. Nokia's presence in the United States has been severely diminished in recent years, and it has not sold devices on the Verizon or Sprint networks since 2005.

As he unveiled the Lumia 800 in London, Nokia Chief Executive Stephen Elop said the company intends to be "leaders in smartphone design and craftsmanship." The top-tier Lumia 800 is based on the much-hyped N9 device, which Nokia unveiled earlier this year.

U.S. cell phones, tablets outnumber Americans

The Lumia phones put the emphasis on entertainment, navigation and sports, offering music mixes and a partnership with ESPN for mobile coverage.
The announcement follows Nokia's partnership with Microsoft in February. The phones, Elop said, were part of "a new dawn for Nokia."

Nokia also launched four new mobile phones that it said blur the line between smartphones and more traditional handsets by offering keyboards and touchscreens, combined with Internet access and integrated social networking.
Elop is under pressure to rejuvenate the company which, despite selling the highest volume of mobile phones worldwide, has suffered in the smartphone market. Earlier this year, Apple overtook Nokia to become the world's top smartphone maker.
Nokia announced last month that it plans to cut 3,500 jobs by the end of 2012. Those were in addition to 4,000 job cuts announced in April.

How Flickr can help to save the whales

Want to help save the humpback whale? Pick up a camera and start taking pictures, says Gale McCullough, a "fluke matcher" at Allied Whale, a research group.

McCullough is a citizen scientist -- a do-goodery term for volunteers who help collect data about the natural world -- who uses the photo-sharing site Flickr to catalog photos of whales. Not just any photos, though. She's specifically interested in the humpback's fluke, or the tail. On humpbacks, the underside of the fluke carries unique identifying information in the form of a splotchy black and white pattern. This can be used to tell one whale from another, much the way fingerprints work for humans.

McCullough spends time looking through these whale-tail photos and matching them to each other. Combining that data with dates, she and other scientists can track a particular whale's movement over time, giving each of these enormous marine mammals a story that otherwise would be unknown.

To learn more about the whales, however, more photos are needed.

"If you go whale watching, take a camera," she said in an interview on a boat off the coast of Maine, where she was speaking to a group of people attending the annual PopTech conference. "And then put it on Flickr. I'll find it."

The conclusions scientists draw from these amateur photos are not insignificant.

Last year, for example, McCullough -- a spry, gray-haired woman who wears tinted glasses that nearly cover her face and an orange jacket bright enough to make onlookers wish they had tinted lenses of their own -- did a casual Flickr search and noticed that a particular humpback whale, No. 1363 in the official whale catalog, had been spotted by a man who was on vacation in Madagascar. Two years before that photo was taken, the same whale was seen off the coast of Brazil, some 6,000 miles away.

That migration route was longer than any that had been recorded for a single humpback, according to a journal article that cited the finding.

"This observation is altogether unprecedented," Peter Stevick, a marine biologist at College of the Atlantic, and author of that article, told Wired Science. "There are only a few humpback whales that have been seen in more than one breeding ground before this, and they moved to relatively nearby areas -- eastern to western Australia, eastern to western Africa, for example."

"We have to rearrange the way we feel about the ocean now," McCullough said in 2010.

With more photos to comb through, more discoveries could be made, she said.

She encouraged anyone who goes on a whale-watching trip to try to take photographs of the whale's fluke. Wait much longer than you think you should to click the shutter, though, because the fluke becomes visible just before the whale dives back down into the ocean, she said.

If you upload the photos to a public photo-sharing website -- Flickr is just one of many -- and tag them with a date and location, then scientists may be able to use that photo to track the whale on its journeys through the ocean.

McCullough said photos of whales in South Africa and Madagascar are particularly needed.

Taking a photo of a whale can be the start of a lifelong learning experience, she said.

"Whales are a great way to take people down into the ocean."

Google's Ice Cream Sandwich, Siri talks back

On this week's Tech Check podcast, Doug Gross, Stephanie Goldberg and Mark Milian discuss the roll-out of "Ice Cream Sandwich," Google's delicious new version of its Android mobile operating software.

Google debuted Android 4.0 this week in Hong Kong, along with the new Samsung Galaxy Nexus smartphone, which will be the first gadget to run it.

The crew discusses its features, including Face Unlock, which is designed to recognize the user's face instead of a password.

Mark has spent a week testing Siri, the new voice-activated "digital assistant" on the iPhone 4S. We discuss her strengths and weaknesses, as well has giving in to the irresistible urge to ask her questions from "2001: A Space Odyssey."

Our Reader Comments of the Week come from a story about WireDoo, the new search engine being developed by a team working with MC Hammer. Yes ... that MC Hammer. (As if there could be two).

And we present to you a Tech Fail of the Week that was 14 years in the making.

Michael Dell, founder of Dell Inc., was asked in 1997 what he would do if he were the CEO of Apple. This week he got a long-awaited opportunity to revisit his fateful words.

To listen to Tech Check, click on the audio box to the left. To subscribe, you can add Tech Check to your RSS feed here. You can also listen, or subscribe, on iTunes.

Apple's Siri will need to learn new tricks

Summon Siri, the digital assistant contained within the iPhone 4S, and ask: "Why is it so hard to find good help these days?"

"I don't know what you mean," answers the robotic female voice.

Despite all of the quirky, saucy and entertaining responses to oddball remarks -- like "I'm drunk" (Siri returns a list of taxi services) or "What do you look like?" ("Shiny") -- Siri is unable to deliver on many basic commands.

For example, the voice-command service refuses to launch applications. ("I can't do that for you, Mark. I'm sorry to let you down.") The iPhone 4S has an improved camera and a button on the lock screen to quickly access it, but Siri is not a photographer. ("I can't take your pictures for you.") Twitter is embedded in the new version of Apple's mobile software, but ask Siri to tweet, and it says, "Sorry Mark, I can't help you with Twitter."
A glaring omission, which would happen to be a major technical undertaking for Apple, is the inability for third-party developers to tie their apps into Siri. At launch, Apple included data from Yelp for restaurant and retail recommendations, and the Wolfram Alpha search engine for a wide swath of data queries such as city populations and currency conversions.

However, the other 500,000 or so programs on the App Store can't interact with Siri. Brady Forrest, who organizes technology conferences in the San Francisco Bay Area, said he'd like to be able to call up Siri to identify songs with Shazam, get food delivered or order a product on Amazon.com.

But this would be possible only if Siri's functions were unlocked in the same way a developer can access the phone's camera or gyroscope.

"My concern is that Siri will be more constrained by 'biz dev' than by technology," Forrest said, basing his worries on Apple favoring Yelp over Google for local business reviews.

What's more frustrating is that the original Siri app, which Apple shut down after the iPhone 4S was released, was able to accomplish tasks through other services. It could order movie or concert tickets, book restaurant reservations using OpenTable, and call a cab via Taxi Magic. It could also tweet.

Perhaps an open framework is coming. Apple typically does not discuss future releases, and the Siri reborn for the iPhone 4S is less than a week old. On its website, Apple lists 18 apps that Siri works with, two of which, Maps and Yelp, are U.S.-only. The company says it is still working to add new features to the service. "Siri is currently in beta, and we'll continue to improve it over time," Apple's website says.

For the things Siri can do, it (she?) does them well. It can pull up directions, transcribe written notes, create calendar appointments, and remind me to take out the trash at 9 p.m. or whenever I arrive home

Siri's voice recognition technology is adept at interpreting my mumbles and whispers. (It's still awkward to talk to a gadget in public.) And whether I say "text" or "message" or "send an SMS," Siri knows what I mean.

But as I turn to Siri more frequently, I have run into some walls.

I can dictate text messages and e-mails, which can then be read back to me, but Siri won't read me my e-mail messages aloud, which would be useful for when I'm driving. And Siri can't record audio to Apple's own app. "I haven't yet learned dictation, Mark. You'll have to use the Voice Memos app for that," Siri says.

While Siri can't access songs contained within MOG, Pandora or Spotify, it can play an album from Apple's own music app, much like the old Voice Control feature. Yet it can't start a movie stored in Apple's videos app.

Using Voice Control instead of Siri remains an option, which is convenient because Siri requires an Internet connection. But when the phone doesn't have Web access, say in the subway, the system does not automatically switch from Siri to Voice Control.

Customers around the world have complained that Siri can only operate in English, French and German. Apple says more languages, including Chinese, Italian, Japanese, Korean and Spanish, will be integrated next year.

Maybe demanding an assistant be quadrilingual is asking too much. Comedian Stephen Colbert poked fun at the high expectations for Siri on his show, jokingly asking his phone to write lines for him.

But as users get accustomed to shouting demands at their phones and having them fulfilled, Apple -- like its competitors in Microsoft's Bing or Google's voice search -- has more work to do to translate into voice commands all of the functions that are currently just a few taps away.

Iceland's president: Social media turns the government into a 'sideshow'

Facebook updates and YouTube videos are becoming more important to global affairs than governments, Iceland's president said this week.

"This so-called social media has transformed our democratic institutions in such a way that what takes place in the more traditional institutions of power -- congress, ministries, even the White House or the presidency and the cabinet in my country -- has become almost a sideshow," Olafur Ragnar Grimsson, Iceland's president, said in an interview with CNN on Thursday at the PopTech conference here in coastal Maine.

"I know it's a strong statement, especially coming from someone who spent most of his life within those institutions. But the power of the social media is, in my opinion, transforming the political process in such a way that I can't see any chance for the traditional, formal institutions of our democratic systems to keep up."

The statement comes after years of hardship for Iceland, which suffered the collapse of its financial system in 2008 and a massive 2010 volcano eruption that shut down international travel in the region. The country saw widespread political protests during this period, leading Grimsson to say Iceland was the example that Egyptians and now the global Occupy Wall Street movements followed.

Grimsson, an even-spoken figure with Bill-Clinton hair and a charming Nordic accent, said protests organized by social media and technological developments are healthy for society, whether or not that offers him much in the way of job security.

He sees technological development as a way to move Iceland forward after tragedy.

"Reading was always important to people in Iceland and a literary creativity," he said. "Somehow, with the digital revolution, this interest was transported over to computers, websites, mobile phones and so on. So Iceland now ranks among the top countries in all of these areas, and it has brought forward a new generation of people who are creating companies in these fields."

The country has rebounded significantly since the 2008 meltdown, he said, and that's because Iceland bucked the advice of the international community and decided not to bail out the banks and financial institutions that helped create the foreclosure crisis.

"We are coming out of this crisis earlier and more effectively than I think anyone, including ourselves, could have expected. Iceland is now serving as an interesting example of how you can get out of a very deep financial and economic crisis."

Iceland's unemployment rate dropped to 5.9% in the third financial quarter of this year, down from 8.5% earlier this year. The United States' unemployment rate is higher, at 9.1%, but Iceland's unemployment rate is still up compared to pre-crisis levels, which hovered around 2% to 4 % in 2006 and 2007.

A creative spirit helped the country recover, as former bankers found new jobs in other industries that are, on the whole, more helpful for the country, he said.

"One of the lessons is that if you want to grow your economy towards the creative direction of the 21st century, a big banking sector, even if it is successful, is in fact bad news," he said.

Iceland is also trying to develop itself as a hub for Internet traffic.

Grimsson says new data centers -- the computer warehouses that essentially house the Internet -- are coming to Iceland because they can be powered by clean energy, and because the country is a smart linking point between North America and Europe.

Underwater broadband cables connect the island nation to both of those continents.

"The climate in Iceland is such that if you want to cool the storage center, to put it simply, you open a window," he said, "whereas 40% of the data center's running costs in other locations is spent on air conditioning. So the operation is much cheaper in Iceland."

He's also using the Internet to promote tourism in his country.

A video posted on the site Vimeo shows the president sitting behind a wooden desk and inviting anyone who will listen to come to his house for "delicious pancakes."

"It's a great idea because it also displays that the essence of Icelandic society is openness and friendliness," he said. "It's one of those countries that's still assuming that anyone who come comes as a friend until proven otherwise, whereas most of the world is moving in a different direction -- assuming everyone is a threat, until proven otherwise."

The offer for presidential pancakes, by the way, is still on the table for those who act fast; and he'll serve them just the way his grandmother did, "with cream and jam."

"I'm not going to open a pancake restaurant," he said, laughing. "I'm just going to do it on a smaller scale."

Smartphone detects the danger in a heartbeat

A new medical invention which harnesses the power of smartphone technology could revolutionize the treatment of heart patients, according to researchers in Switzerland.

The autonomous tool -- developed jointly by the Embedded Systems and Telecommunications Circuits labs at Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne (EPFL) -- not only automatically identifies anomalies in heart-rate, but also alerts doctors in seconds helping them treat patients more quickly.

"Many of the problems with the heart are not very well understood," says David Atienza, head of the Embedded Systems Lab.

"It's very difficult for doctors to anticipate what is going to happen. This device will provide a better understanding of what is going on," Atienza added.

The small, lightweight monitor consists of four non-invasive electrode sensors attached to the skin which are linked to a radio module and computer chip which clips onto a patient's belt.

Data is fed to the user's smartphone where it can be viewed in real time for anything up to 150 hours on a single charge.
Complex algorithms flag up any abnormalities with data sent to a doctor for examination via a picture attachment on text or email.

Watch Atienza explain how the new tool works

"The system collects very reliable and precise data," Atienza says, "but above all it provides an automatic analysis and immediate transmission of data to the doctor, preventing him or her from having to work through hours of recorded data."

It's taken four years to develop and is a leap forward, Atienza says, from more bulky Holter monitors which are generally worn by patients for around 24 hours at a time.

Cardiologist Etienne Pruvot from Lausanne University Hospitals Cardiology Service -- one of two hospitals helping Atienza and his team develop the device -- is excited by its potential.

"Its size, its lightness, its ease of use, the fact that it measures continuously and remotely, which allows analysis to take place anywhere, makes this device very attractive to doctors," Pruvot said in a statement.

Atienza is also confident the tool will find other health-related uses: monitoring athletic performance, perhaps, or assessing diet and physical activity in obese patients, he says.

EPFL's research is part of the wider "Guardian Angels for a Smarter Life" project -- a pan-European project involving universities, research institutions and private companies -- which aims to develop small, autonomous and affordable technology to monitor health and also prevent accidents.

Peter J. Bentley, a computer scientist from the UK's University College London and inventor of the iStethescope app says there is currently a big push for these kinds of technologies.

"Certainly the way medicine seems to be moving is towards ever greater use of mobile devices," Bentley said.

"We are all very excited about the possibilities -- the ability to sample all kinds of different data, store it, transmit it and process it.

"It allows us to monitor different aspects of a patient's health and get data to specialists wherever they are," he added.
Many doctors are already using smartphone apps (there are thousands to choose from) but regulation by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and European legislators is looming, says Bentley.

"In some respects this is a good thing because it's going to ensure (portable medical) devices will be effective," says Bentley, who is currently developing a new automated triage system.

"But the downside is that it takes a long time and slows down the rapid innovation we currently have," he said.

The World Health Organization estimates that 17 million people die of cardiovascular disease every year.

Many of these deaths, Atienza says, happen because the type of pathology isn't detected in time.

"The beauty of this type of device is that you can monitor people 24 hours a day, seven days a week," Atienza said.

Not only will this simplify life for heart patients (less trips to the hospital), he thinks, but it could also slash costs for healthcare systems.

Furthermore, Atienza predicts that wearable round-the-clock monitoring devices will bring about new types of analysis, leading to new treatments and ultimately save lives all around the world.

Steve Jobs: How to live, and die like him

Monday sees the eagerly awaited publication of "Steve Jobs," the authorized biography of the late tech pioneer written by Walter Isaacson.

Remarkably -- through leaks of the book's details in the press and reflections from his friends -- I've learned more about Jobs since his passing than I knew during his life.

What I've learned is that Jobs was guided by a very specific worldview -- a set of values that shaped everything he did. And I've begun to think how we can all live more like Steve: The Tao of Steve, perhaps.

How to be rich

Steve, despite his financial success, was frugal. According to Isaacson, a former chairman of CNN, Steve said of money, "I did not want to live that nutso lavish lifestyle that so many people do when they get rich." As a result, Steve's home wasn't particularly huge and he famously embraced minimalism.

"I saw a lot of other people at Apple, especially after we went public, how it changed them.", Steve said in a recorded interview. "And a lot of people thought that they had to start being rich. I mean, a few people went out and bought Rolls Royces, and they bought homes, and their wives got plastic surgery. I saw these people who were really nice simple people turn into these bizarro people. And I made a promise to myself to myself, I said I'm not gonna let this money ruin my life."

Steve wasn't completely opposed to having expensive things, however: He drove a Mercedes-Benz SL55 AMG.

How to dress

Steve's frugality showed in his simple wardrobe, too: a pair of jeans and a black turtleneck. Jobs embraced this look for its simplicity -- allowing him, perhaps, to focus on more important things. "He also came to like the idea of having a uniform for himself, both because of its daily convenience (the rationale he claimed) and its ability to convey a signature style," Isaacson said of Steve's look. Jobs had enough of the turtlenecks to wear them for his entire life.

His frugality played into Jobs' clothing choices as well. Former Compaq chairman Ben Rosen recalled in his blog this week a meeting he had with Jobs on a bitterly cold day in Manhattan. Rosen noticed Jobs did not have a coat, and the two went to a clothing store to purchase one. Jobs found a coat he liked, but balked at the price. "That much for an overcoat? Too much. Besides, I'll never use it in California," he said. The pair left the store, with Jobs tolerating the freezing cold rather than spending money on a coat he wouldn't wear again.

How to handle authority

Living like Steve involves having a healthy disregard for authority. Jobs' penchant for breaking the rules was best summarized in Apple's 1997 "Think Different" ad campaign: "Here's to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They're not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo."

Jobs questioned authority his entire life, even choosing to drive without license plates. Isaacson asked Jobs why he didn't have plates, to which Jobs initially replied it was for privacy reasons. When informed that having no license plates would actually attract attention, Jobs replied that he didn't have license plates because he didn't have license plates.

How to die

Jobs' philosophy on death was that it may ultimately be a good thing: "Nature's change agent," he called it.

In a 2005 Stanford commencement speech, Jobs said of death: "Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything -- all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure -- these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked."

And yet Jobs may have altered his views as he faced his own mortality. According to Isaacson, Jobs said he was "50-50" on whether he believed in God.

"Ever since I've had cancer I've been thinking about it more -- and I find myself believing a bit more. I kind of, maybe it's because I want to believe in an afterlife, that when you die, it doesn't just all disappear. The wisdom you've accumulated. Somehow it lives on. But sometimes I think it's just like an on-off switch -- click and you're gone," Jobs said. "And that's why I don't like putting on-off switches on Apple devices."

To live -- and to die -- like Steve Jobs, then, is to live simply, to challenge the norm, to never let success change you. Most of all, it's to live in the knowledge that you're going to die. As Jobs said of mortality: "Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life."

Tim Cook CEO

Tim Cook is the CEO of Apple and serves on its Board of Directors.

Before being named CEO in August 2011, Tim was Apple’s Chief Operating Officer and was responsible for all of the company’s worldwide sales and operations, including end-to-end management of Apple’s supply chain, sales activities, and service and support in all markets and countries. He also headed Apple’s Macintosh division and played a key role in the continued development of strategic reseller and supplier relationships, ensuring flexibility in response to an increasingly demanding marketplace.

Prior to joining Apple, Tim was vice president of Corporate Materials for Compaq and was responsible for procuring and managing all of Compaq’s product inventory. Previous to his work at Compaq, Tim was the chief operating officer of the Reseller Division at Intelligent Electronics.

Tim also spent 12 years with IBM, most recently as director of North American Fulfillment where he led manufacturing and distribution functions for IBM’s Personal Computer Company in North and Latin America.

Tim earned an M.B.A. from Duke University, where he was a Fuqua Scholar, and a Bachelor of Science degree in Industrial Engineering from Auburn University.

Meet Tim Cook: Apple’s New CEO

Steve Jobs, the heart and soul of Apple Inc., just resigned as CEO. Apple’s board said it named Tim Cook to replace Jobs as CEO. Cook has been filling in for Jobs since he took a medical leave earlier this year.
Jobs brought Tim Cook on board in 1998 to oversee the manufacturing of Apple’s computers.

The Alabama native is an industrial engineer by training, and also earned a master’s degree in business administration from Duke University. Before joining Apple, Cook worked at IBM and at Compaq, the computer company now owned by Hewlett-Packard.

Cook also filled in for Jobs for two months in 2004, when Jobs recuperated from surgery to remove a cancerous tumor from his pancreas. Jobs later turned over to Cook responsibility for Apple’s worldwide sale and its Mac computer division. He was appointed chief operating officer of Apple in 2005, and stepped in for Jobs again in 2009 when the Apple CEO took a medical leave.

iPhone 4S sale made Buyers line up

Apple fans -- including co-founder Steve Wozniak -- lined up on Friday morning for a chance to buy the iPhone 4S, the latest in the company's line of "Jesus Phones," which includes many under-the-hood improvements.
The lines, which drew thousands, were part exercises in tech commercialism and part homages to Steve Jobs, Apple's other co-founder, who died last week following a battle with pancreatic cancer.
In New York, Apple fans created a makeshift memorial to Jobs that included flowers, photos, iPad boxes and apples (as in the fruit).
And in Atlanta, some people said they were lining up for the phone in part because of Jobs.
"I wanted it anyway, but (Jobs' death) made me sort of want it more because this is the last one I know he worked on," Dwight Hill, from an Atlanta suburb, said of his decision to buy the phone. "I just hope the company keeps going in the same direction."
About 200 people had lined up in the wee hours of the morning in New York to buy the new phone, which has a faster processor and a "digital assistant" that responds to voice commands and talks back to phone owners, answering their questions.
Long lines also formed in Asia and Europe as people waited for the phone.
In Silicon Valley, California, Wozniak, the Apple co-founder who, along with Jobs, helped create the world's first truly personal computer, sat in an armchair at the front of a line that began forming Thursday afternoon. He tapped on his iPad, sipped Diet Dr. Pepper and took photos with fans while he awaited the phone's release.
"I want to get mine along with the millions of other fans," Wozniak said. "I just want to be able to talk to my phone."
The iPhone 4S initially was panned by critics, who said it was more of a facelift to the iPhone 4 than a new product. The phone's exterior looks the same as its predecessor, but the guts are new. Inside there's a faster A5 dual-core processor, an improved 8 megapixel camera and a voice assistant named Siri, who will respond to voice commands and answer questions.
When Brian X. Chen, a tech writer at Wired, tested the phone, he found Siri to be quite the helpful -- and hilarious -- assistant.
He published a series of his conversations with Siri.
"Me: 'I'm drunk,' " he wrote.
"Siri: 'I found a number of cabs fairly close to you.' (Perfect; it didn't dial my ex-girlfriend.)"
Aside from Jobs, Siri seemed to be one of the main draws for people waiting in line for the iPhone 4S.
"I just want the personal assistant," said Teresa Sparks, 41, an Atlanta nurse who had been waiting in line for the phone since 4:45 a.m.
Scott England, who also waited in an Atlanta line for the phone, teased a friend of his who said he was buying the iPhone 4S because of the camera. Clearly, he said, "Siri is a big deal," not the camera.
"He's got a secretary -- I don't," he joked.
Becky Waddell, a 33-year-old real-estate agent, also praised Apple's new digital assistant, which is only available on the iPhone 4S, and which has been compared to HAL 9000, Skynet and other fictional computer overlords.
"I love Siri," she said. "We played with it in the store. I know for sure it will make me a safer driver. I don't have to scramble through my phone while I'm driving. If I can talk to it and get answers, it's going to cut out so much time for me."
Plenty of excitement seemed to surround the phone's release.
In true Apple-head fashion, two Apple fans in New York said they arrived at the flagship Apple Store 18 days before Friday, and blogged about the experience on a site called iPhoneWhatever.
Another person arrived at that store on crutches.
"I got hit by a car and had surgery a few weeks ago. There's tons of metal plates in my foot -- it shattered," David Betz, a 26-year-old bartender. "Is it worth it? We'll find out."
Apple CEO Tim Cook helped unveil the 4S last week a day before Jobs' death.
Pre-orders of the phone started on October 7 and beat expectations. Apple sold 1 million of the phones in the first 24 hours via its website and carriers AT&T, Verizon and -- for the first time -- Sprint. By comparison, Apple reported 600,000 iPhone 4 pre-orders last year in 24 hours, but that included orders placed with overseas carriers.
The iPhone 4S went on sale Friday at all 245 Apple stores in the U.S., in addition to the following countries: Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Japan and the United Kingdom. The new iPhone will be available in 22 additional countries by the end of October, Apple says.
Apple stores and other retailers opened at 8 a.m. Friday. Online orders can be made at Apple's online store as well as on AT&T, Verizon and Sprint's websites.
If you were hoping to pre-order now and pick up the phone Friday, you're out of luck. Pre-orders at AT&T, Sprint and Verizon are sold out, and phones ordered through Apple's website may not be delivered for several weeks.
All of those brick-and-mortar retail stores also will carry the phone, along with select Apple-approved retailers: Radio Shack, Best Buy, Target and Sam's Club. (Word of warning: Check availability before lining up at one of those third-party sellers. Inventory is limited, and some will be filling pre-orders before selling whatever stock may remain.)
Customers who buy the phone at an Apple retail store will be offered free in-store setup service, personalized instruction on how to set up e-mail and download apps.
The phone sells for $199 for 16GB of storage, $299 for 32GB and $399 for 64GB, marking the first time an iPhone has had that much memory.
It also seems impossible to separate interest in the iPhone 4S with news of Jobs' death last week.
Among the legions of Apple's diehard fans, some have taken saying the "4S" in the phone's name represents the words "For Steve."
Although it's virtually impossible that the company would have done that on purpose (the phone's development happened largely when Jobs was still CEO) it speaks both to the long reach of Jobs' legacy and the cult-like devotion that some Apple loyalists feel toward the company and its products.