Today portable devices as mobile phones, laptops, Personal Digital Assistants(PDAs), and many other mobile devices are ubiquitous. Along with the rapid advances in positioning and wireless technologies, moving object position information has become easier to acquire. This availability of location information triggered the need for clustering and classifying location information to extract useful knowledge from it and to discover hidden patterns in moving objects’ motion behaviors. Many existing algorithms have studied clustering as an analysis technique to find data distribution patterns. In this paper the authors consider the clustering problem applied to moving object trajectory data. They propose a “Time-based” clustering algorithm that adapts the k-means algorithm for trajectory data.

What happens when your G35 Logitech headset which you use to answer the phone is set to voice morphing without you knowing?  A lot of embarrassment when you sound like a chipmunk.  I answer business calls using a Vonage softphone.  One of my clients really had a hard time not laughing.  (What made it worse was that I had at least 5 calls that day and it was the last person that actually talked to at the end of the business day that let me know something was amiss.  I had no idea why so many people were giggling and not taking me seriously).  As you can’t hear yourself when you talk if “preview” voice is set to off to prevent echoes, you need to make sure that your headset microphone settings are set properly.  Better yet, if you are using this headset on a strictly business Windows 7 computer and not a gaming one (like me, but I move my headset to my gaming computer when I do game), then just plug in the headset and install the default drivers from Windows update.  Without the additional control software from Logitech, your headset will have basic microphone, volume, and sound capabilities without have the additional software which could lead to unintentional voice morphs.

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The GPS (Global Positioning System) is currently the most favoured tool for location determination and navigation. Combined with mobile phones, it has gained rapid acceptance among the wider community. The integration of mobile phones and GPS receivers has provided a very powerful tool with great potential for devolvement into future mobile applications. The proposed “GlobeTracker” system exploits the large potential that exists in the combination of GPS and J2ME to develop a navigation system. The whole system uses the J2MEMAP API to locate the server of different map providers, then displays the current user location and tracks its users in real time. This new proposed application is developed based on the “GlobeTrotter” system.

Gone are the days of true privacy.  If you don’t want to be tracked, stay off the internet as well as cell phones.  That’s the way it’s going to be people.  I admit, I’m very skeptical.  When it comes company’s privacy policies, it’s just a matter of their word.  Even if a company as a whole means well, all it takes is one individual that goes against policy to blow it.  In short, just think of privacy as a best effort approach.  Apple released a Q/A about location tracking with its iPhones.  Reading through it, Apple is essentially saying that it maintains your privacy and the information is used only for better cell phone service.  Apple is also saying that people need to be educated and that the media has blown stuff out of proportion.  I find it odd sometimes that it takes the media to blow something out of proportion before there “happens” to be a discovery of a bug where an iOS update is needed to “fix” the bug where the cache is not deleted when location services are turned off.  Coincidence?  Maybe, but one thing’s for sure.  This is sure to shape privacy issues that we will continue to play out with the continuance of technology.

What do you think?

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Recently, PhatPad for the iPad was updated to v1.2.  This $8 program is powerful in that it turns the iPad into an advanced brainstorming tool by enabling users to draw, write, and type on the iPad, then instantly share ideas via email, WiFi sync, Dropbox, or with PhatPad’s built-in presentation mode.

With version 1.2, the following features were included:

• The new Folders feature allows users to organize their documents in the folder hierarchy. The new Document manager UI allows users to create, rename, rearrange using drag and drop, and delete folders and documents. The updated Dropbox synchronization feature supports synchronization of the entire folder hierarchy.
• The new File Manager UI allows users to search all PhatPad documents for characters or words.
• File sharing feature now allows users to specify the remote access password. If the password is set, it will be required to access PhatPad documents via WiFi. The password is also required when uploading files onto the device.
• The new Autoinsert Recognition Results option allows for continuous writing in the Handwriting panel mode. When this option is on, an adjustable marker is displayed on the panel. Starting a new word on the left side of the marker (on top of the previous writing) will send the recognized text into the application and start a new recognition session.
• PhatPad now supports background playback and recording for voice notes and the remote control. The remote control can also be used in the Presentation mode while audio is playing.

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PDAs, cellular phones and other mobile devices are now capable of supporting complex data manipulation operations. Here, the authors focus on ad-hoc spatial joins of datasets residing in multiple non-cooperative servers. Assuming that there is no mediator available, the spatial joins must be evaluated on the mobile device. Contrary to common applications that consider the cost at the server side, the main issue is the minimization of the transferred data, while meeting the resource constraints of the device. They show that existing methods, based on partitioning and pruning, are inadequate in many realistic situations.