From secure WLANs to devices that can detect hazardous chemical agents, wireless security technologies are a growing sector in the overall wireless marketplace. The events of 9/11 made security a public and government priority. The military, long interested in cutting-edge technologies, is pushing innovation through DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. But security is not the sole domain of war and warriors: Business and consumers are seeking safe and smart technologies based on wireless products, like those that rely on GPS monitoring and tracking systems.

MIT Opens Lab to Develop Nanotechnologies for Future Warriors

Industry – The high-tech military of the future is getting its start today with the official opening of the Institute for Soldier Nanotechnologies on the Massachusetts Institute of Technology campus. Read more ...

Info-Cop Gives NJ Police an Edge

Info-Cop is giving cops in New Jersey an electronic edge when it comes to public safety. To date, more than 100 police and emergency agencies in the Garden State have signed on with the Newark-based company, which provides software that allows law enforcement real-time access to local, state and federal crime databases using PDAs or other handhelds. Read more ...

Mobile Carriers an Entry Point to Identify-Fraud Crime

Identity theft is an even more sophisticated – and expensive – crime than previously believed, according to a year-long study conducted by ID Analytics and 13 industry representatives, including Citibank, Diners Club, Discover Financial Services, First North American National Bank and Sprint.

Calling it the nation's "first-ever cross-industry identity theft research," the study involved analysis of identity information from hundreds of millions of credit, debit and wireless phone applications as well as confirmed and suspicious fraud account records. Read more ...

Cell Phone Dangers Still a Matter of User Beware

What goes around come around. In this case, it is another spate of e-mails warning about the hazards of using a cell phone while gassing up at the service station. The e-mails, which began circulating in 1999, caution "mobile phones can ignite fuel or fumes" and contain examples of phone-ignited accidents. Read more ...

System Keeps Real-Time Eye on the Prize

Peace of mind is the selling point for this new entry in wireless security: MommyTrack, a mobile video monitoring system that keeps real-time tabs on the kids. Read more ...

Nokia's New Camera Can Send SMS Messages

Nokia gets our vote for the coolest upcoming gizmo. Scheduled for release in the spring of 2003, the Nokia Observation Camera combines a digital VGA camera, GSM transceiver, multimedia messaging (MMS) and simple SMS technology in the same unit. Read more ...

Clothing for the Fashionable Warrior

A half-dozen years ago, wearable computing was the stuff of super-geek dreams. Today, the ultimate mobile computing system is the stuff of the battlefield, and the groundwork for outfitting these 21st century combatants is being laid at the U.S. Army Soldier Systems Center's Natick Labs in Natick, Mass.

One hot research focus: the integration of computers and electronics with textiles. It's a logical extension of true wearable mobility: By weaving networking capabilities, including antennas, into clothing, military personnel would be freed from the "weight and bulk" of currently used communication devices. Read more ...

DOE Backs Research on Devices That Can 'See'

The U.S. Department of Energy is helping speed the development of an electronic device that could restore vision to millions of people with blindness caused by retinal disorders. Read more ...

About Face: Biometric Push to Secure U.S. Borders

A new and tighter immigration bill passed unanimously (97-0) by the U.S. Senate will require all visitor documents to be "machine-readable" via biometric technologies, such as face recognition. In the meantime, the U.S. Attorney General is calling for the breakup of the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS). Read more ...

Infrared Eye Keeps Tabs on Road Hazards

A Canadian company that develops imaging technology for destroying enemy missiles is helping give motorists – and wildlife – a fighting chance. With funding from the Insurance Corporation of British Columbia (ICBC), QWIP Technologies, of Edmonton, and its subsidiary, InTransTech, are field testing an infrared camera system for alerting motorists that an animal is wandering on the road ahead. Read more ...

Wanted: A Few Good Robots (Actually, It's More Like a Hive)

U.S. military scientists, on the prowl for the latest in high-tech solutions, are calling on the high-tech industry to create an army of tiny robots to patrol and protect interior spaces against outside threats. Read more ...

Air Force Targets Radar 'Spoofing' Attacks

The U.S. Air Force is offering a five-year, $24 million contract for "techniques and technology" to protect military radar against the same threat plaguing the Internet – electronic "spoofing." Read more ...

Using 3D GPS to Keep Tabs on Structural 'Integrity'

Two California companies are combining efforts to produce cutting-edge 3D GPS technology for monitoring major structures, including dams, bridges and power facilities. Read more ...

Skin Deep: Green Light for U.S. Distribution of Human Microchip

VeriChip has been given an official green light to begin selling its implantable human microchip in the United States. The Palm Beach, Fla., company yesterday announced that it had received "written guidance" from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) that the chip is not considered a "regulated medical device."

The designation clears the way for the company to begin marketing, distributing and selling the rice-sized chip for use in a "variety of security, emergency and healthcare applications," the company said. Read more ...

Using 3D GPS to Keep Tabs on Structural 'Integrity'

Two California companies are combining efforts to produce cutting-edge 3D GPS technology for monitoring major structures, including dams, bridges and power facilities. Read more ...

Astronauts Only a Heartbeat Away

Off-the-shelf heart-monitoring technology kept tabs on the health of the seven astronauts aboard the U.S. Space Shuttle Columbia. The use of commercially developed telemedicine products was a first for NASA – "civilian" patients are already using them. Read more ...

Air Force Fashion Statement: Protection

The next market for wearable-computing could be the battlefield – and the computer itself could be something as mobile, and comfortable, as a mesh undershirt. Read more ...

Chipping Away at Andy Rooney

Andy Rooney, the curmudgeonly commentator on TV's "60 Minutes" news magazine, has been challenged to "chip" his words by a developer of implantable human microchip technology. Read more ...

With Visions of Safety Beams ...

New this holiday season from venerable catalog company Hammacher Schlemmer, a high-tech device that uses infrared beams as a personal safety shield. The device from American IR Technologies, Inc., called Safety Beam, creates an invisible infrared barrier between objects – or people. Read on ...

Small Footprint for Mobile Fingerprint ID

SBC Florida-based AuthenTec, biometric semiconductor technology company, is entering the mobile fingerprint-identification market with a sensor that it claims is "by far the smallest touch-and-go biometric device available today." Read on ...

CIC, Symbol Team on Mobile Signatures

SBC Communication Intelligence Corporation (CIC) announced this week that its Sign-On biometric signature technology will supports the new Microsoft Windows-Powered Pocket PC 2002 software platform. Read on ...

A 'Digital Angel' for Troubling Times

Before Sept. 11, Digital Angel was simply an up-and-coming company with an honorable mission: creating cutting-edge location-technology products to help parents and caregivers keep track of both the whereabouts and basic well-being of loved ones.

"We wanted to provide hope to those who need it, something good that could be used for happy endings. We saw our products as tools for bringing peace of mind," said Digital Angel's Chief Technology Officer Keith Bolton. "Today there is a whole other level of awareness." Read on ...