How secure is your card info?: BBC

By Maggie Shiels 
Technology reporter, BBC News Website, Silicon Valley

In light of the biggest identity theft case ever prosecuted in America, the spotlight is being turned on just how secure is our credit and debit card information? 

The question is a simple one but the answer might appear to be a bit harder to pin down. 

VeriSign, a firm that secures websites for e-commerce, told the BBC that credit and debit card information is "vulnerable" but they are working with retailers to change that. 

"Credit and debit card information is just not incredibly secure," said Perry Tancredi, VeriSign's senior product manager for fraud detection. 

"But it is counterbalanced by the amount of fraud losses due to cheque fraud and direct debit fraud which is much greater than credit card fraud." 

Mr Tancredi said: "Regardless of how strong the security measures, and how vigilant, the weak part of the chain is there is always a human who is responsible and who has overall control over the information." 

He suggested the best bet was for all consumers to "assume that there will be some sort of fraud on your account sooner or later" and put in place a plan to deal with it.

For more on this article, please click on the following link: How secure is your card info?: BBC

The computer says no: Economist

Image processing could help to identify artists by their brushstrokes

THE ability of computers to analyse complex digital images is growing rapidly. Robots are being fitted with powerful vision systems that allow them to recognise and hold things. Satellite images of the Earth can be scanned for tiny features, or pictures from deep space searched for strange objects. Medical images can be analysed to find out what might be going on inside a human body. Now digital imaging is learning how to spot art forgeries too.

Scientific methods have long been used to help authenticate works of art: for instance, paint can be dated from its chemical composition or canvasses X-rayed to reveal what lies below the surface. In recent years, however, the art itself has come under more scientific scrutiny, especially through the analysis of brushstrokes. The idea is to establish the equivalent of an artist’s “handwriting” to help experts attribute paintings.

One of the most comprehensive studies using such methods was published recently in Signal Processing Magazine from the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. It involved analysing the paintings of Vincent van Gogh and was carried out by James Wang of Penn State University and his colleagues from other universities. It was done with the help of the Van Gogh and Kröller-Müller museums in the Netherlands.

For more on this article, please click on the following link: The computer says no: Economist

Flock Web Browser Eases Multitasking But Has Drawbacks: WSJ

PERSONAL TECHNOLOGY 
By WALTER S. MOSSBERG

August 7, 2008; Page D1

Even with the advent of tabbed browsing, which allows you to keep multiple Web pages open in the same window, Web multitasking can be a pain. You have to constantly click back and forth among tabs if they contain fast-changing material you check often, like the status of your friends in social-networking services, or updates to news feeds.

Trying to share information with people on your Web-based networks can introduce another layer of digital jujitsu. It can be awkward to snag a photo or a snippet of text from one Web site and send it to a friend in a social network on another, or post it to your own blog.

But I've been testing a little-known Web browser that attempts to solve these problems. It's called Flock, and it bills itself as "the social Web browser." I found that it worked well, but it isn't for everyone, and it has some important downsides.

Flock is a modified version of the excellent Firefox Web browser that tacks on some special features for social networkers and bloggers. It's available free at flock.com in essentially identical versions for Windows, Mac and Linux.

Flock adds a special vertical "sidebar" at the left of the browser that keeps your social networks, photo sites or news feeds visible at all times, regardless of what page you're viewing in the main browser window.

For more on this article, please click on the following link: Flock Web Browser Eases Multitasking: WSJ