The New York State Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) is looking for a vendor to put together what may end up being the largest text message and e-mail alert system in the country. The MTA said that, following massive flooding of the NYC subway tunnels on August 8th, the need for such a system became clear.

The alerts will inform passengers about construction, train re-routing, and unplanned disruptions such as those from fire and flooding. The system is expected to draw up to a million subscribers.

Commuter rail lines, such as Metro North, have an alert system, but it can take as much as an hour for the messages to be sent out. The MTA plans to fold the commuter lines into the new system which they say will be much more timely.

Currently, subway passengers can subscribe to an e-mail list for planned disruptions, but are forced to rely on announcements made over station and train PA systems for up-to-the-minute updates regarding unexpected interruptions. As any subway passenger knows, such announcement are usually completely incomprehensible.

From Textually.org

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The ever-shrinking right to privacy that we Americans enjoy could be dealt another blow sooner than we all think. On October 8, 2007, the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit in Cincinnati granted the U.S. Government a full-panel hearing to take another look at citizens' rights of privacy for what they're calling "stored electronic communications" (see a definition of that term in the link). In short, they're described as "any transfer of signs, signals, writing, images, sounds, data, or intelligence of any nature transmitted in whole or in part by a wire, radio, electromagnetic, photoelectronic or photooptical system."

Basically, the case looks at what is considered a "reasonable expectation of privacy", and whether or not e-mail, since it is transmitted over Wi-Fi and other networks, is actually public. Meanwhile, e-mail is also broadcast to an ISP (your service provider) and then distributed to other ISPs. In other words, the government seems to think that they have the right to listen in on your e-mail conversations whenever they please, because you are, by definition, "broadcasting" them.

Normally, e-mail would be protected under the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, which was intended to extend wiretap laws to e-mail. The US Government, however, is arguing that because E-mail is "broadcast", it's no longer private.

While government monitoring of e-mail could be construed as a reasonable attempt to harbor crime like terrorist plots and exchanges of child pornography, the notion that the FBI can call up any e-mail record at any time is, at best, disheartening.

So what do you think? Should we expect our e-mail to be private, or do we give up that right the second we hit the "Send" button?

From The Register

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They may be illegal, but cell phone jammers are becoming more and more popular. These devices, which can cost as little as $50 and be as small as a pack of cigarettes, work by sending out strong radio waves that interfere with cell phone antennas, resulting in a "No Signal" warning on the phone.

According to the New York Times, overseas exporters of the cell zapping boxes say shipments to the U.S. have increased recently. They've been shipping hundreds every month to owners of hair salons, restaurants, theaters, and even annoyed commuters who just want some peace and quiet.

The FCC and cell phone providers, like Verizon, have recently stepped up efforts to track down and punish not only retailers, but also the users of cell phone jammers -- first-time offenders can be fined up to $11,000. Some might think this a small price to pay for getting that yappy teen in the movie theater to shut up, but we're not quite ready to cough up that much money for a little silence.

From The New York Times (via Consumerist)

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Facebook is definitely encroaching on MySpace's space, if yesterday's Microsoft/Facebook news is any indication, but the formerly student-only social networking site is busy going after another sophisticated, most-likely-well-educated, professional, or at least famous crowd -- the BlackBerry set. Need proof? Look no further than the new mobile Facebook application for BlackBerry from Research in Motion (RIM), the device's creator/manufacturer.

The new app lets you do the essentials on the social networking site. For example, if you've got a camera equipped Pearl or Curve, you can upload photos, "poke" (a suggestive term for text message), send mail, and post on users' virtual walls. According to early reports from the CTIA conference, the app is just about as fast as the mobile Web version, but much prettier.

Due out by year's end, the app will come pre-installed on new BlackBerrys, making it even easier for all your co-workers to try and get in on your private life and network, so no more drunken' pictures of you making out with a stranger on the barstool, y'all!

BlackBerry owners: Is this going help you take the plunge and finally get on Facebook, or, if you're already a Facebook member, do you think this will turn you into a Crack-Berry-head?

From Research in Motion (RIM) (via BetaNews)

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Despite the ever increasing Web surfing limits placed on employees at work, it looks like porn in the office is still an ongoing issue for many companies, according to a recent USA Today article. About 65% of U.S. employers use monitoring software, but the advent of wireless Internet and gadgets such as BlackBerrys and iPods have made continuous monitoring almost impossible, according to the CEO of PR firm RLM, Richard Laermer.

"There is nothing you can do," Laermer tells USA Today. "Liability is the thing that keeps me up at night, because we are liable for things people do on your premises. It's serious. I'll see somebody doing it, and I'll peek over their shoulder, and they'll say, 'I don't know how that happened.' It's like 10-year-olds. And it's always on company time."

Though many employees claim that ending up on such sites is often accidental, others troll the naughty sites at work for the thrill of it and some even claim to have a medical reason for doing so, like James Pacenza, a former IBM employee and Vietnam vet who said that his at-work porn-viewing helped him to get over post-traumatic stress disorder.

Pacenza was fired from IBM in 2003 for his porn habit, but he's currently suing the company because he found it unfair that those with drug or alcohol problems were allowed to continue at the company with treatment while he was not, citing his age as the real reason he was let go (though he has since dropped the age-discrimination claim). IBM is trying to get the case dismissed.

So what's next, a cell-phone and Wi-Fi network blocker for the workplace like they have at Apple announcements every time Steve Jobs unveils a new product?

From USA Today

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About the only creature lower on the totem pole than the nefarious telemarketer is the spammer. With these creeps, you can't even take solace in the fact that they're only doing their job, which is why it fills us with a sick sense of giddiness every time one of these obnoxious mass-e-mailers gets tossed in the clink.

The latest bozos to get nailed for filling our In-boxes with junk e-mail are Jeffrey A. Kilbride, 41, of Venice, California, and James R. Schaffer, 41, of Paradise Valley, Arizona, who should be spending roughly the next five years for e-mailing graphic porn images advertising hard-core sex sites. Anyone who received the e-mail was able to view them.

Kilbride was sentenced to 72 months behind bars, while Schaffer will be spending the next 63 alongside him. The difference in sentences is due to Kilbride being charged with obstruction of justice for trying to prevent a witness from testifying against the duo. Otherwise both men were charged with sending spam messages with forged headers and domain names, conspiracy, fraud, money laundering, and obscenity -- all under the Can-Spam Act.

In addition to their jail sentences, Kilbride and Schaffer were fined $100,000 and ordered to pay $77,500 to AOL (Switched.com's parent company). They also had to cough up $1.1 million in illegal proceeds.

Anything that prevents more spam from coming to our In-box is a-okay with us.

How about you? Do you think these guys got what they deserved, or is the sentence too harsh? Let us know.

From Information Week

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• Study Claims 83% of All E-Mail is Spam
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Staying on top of the latest delays and service changes related to your daily commute is almost impossible, but not being in the know can often have serious negative consequences on your schedule. Many local transportation systems send out their own alerts, but they tend to be overly general, often late, and usually only sent out under the most extreme of circumstances.

That's where Joshua Crandall got the idea for his start up, Clever Commute. Clever Commute connects commuters, primarily from the New York and Chicago metropolitan areas, in a network for exchanging messages, advice, and alerts -- primarily using their BlackBerrys.

Users can sign up for alerts for trains on New Jersey Transit, PATCH, Long Island Railroad, and Metro North railroad, as well as some commuter buses, and ferries, including the Staten Island Ferry. The service has also recently opened up to riders of the El trains in Chicago. It works like this: If there's a delay, you'll get messages from other users who are already on whatever train line you're subscribed to. Likewise, you can upload messages to be sent to other subscribers on the same route.

And it's not just for delays: If you leave, say, your iPod on the train, you can send a message to the group and hope that someone honest found it.

Currently the service operates mainly with e-mails, though you can also subscribe to a personal RSS feed of alerts. The service could really grow if it decided to open up to the non-BlackBerry crowd and embraced a text message based Twitter-like system, but we'll just have to see how the young service evolves.

From The New York Times

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While many e-mail scams are easily spotted due to their relative ridiculousness and are seemingly safe to simply ignore, one recent scam has its recipients not only taking it seriously but has them in fear for their life.

The e-mail in question reads: "I have been paid some ransom in advance to terminate you with some reasons listed to me by my employer."

And they don't mean "terminate" in the Donald Trump "you're fired" sense. In this case, "terminate" is used in the 'Sopranos', or perhaps more accurately, the 'Terminator,' "you're dead" sense.

Yes, this particular scam claims that you are to be rubbed out should you fail to make a payment of several thousand dollars and you are to tell no friends or relatives as they may be in ones who called for your ultimate demise. Naturally.

Despite being initially frightening, this scam revealed one small problem that had people who got the message smelling a rat: The e-mail gives no deadline or instructions on how to make the payment that would save your life, which kind of defeats the point. Apparently, these particular frauds aren't too bright.

After doing some digging, Harry Whitworth, a 72-year-old New Jersey man who got the threatening e-mail demanding $8,000 from him, found a similar scam out of Arizona with almost exactly the same wording and spelling errors in the message he had received.

According to the FBI, 115 similar cases were reported around the country within a month last winter, with only the amount of money demanded varying, which went up to $80,000.

First our credit is bad, then certain male body parts are too small, and now we're marked for death! Damn you, Internet!

From AP

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• Study Claims 83% of All E-Mail is Spam

Private medical practice is one of the few industries that hasn't been drastically changed by the advent of the Internet.

But sometimes, all it takes is one resourceful individual to change how entire an industry utilizes the online space. That's why we'll be keeping a close eye on amateur photographer and Brooklyn, New York-based M.D. Jay Parkinson.

Dr. Parkinson opened his own private practice in September with no waiting room, no exam room, and no receptionist. In fact, his entire practice is online. All his medical records are stored online at Life Record so that he has 24/7 access to them via his MacBook or iPhone.

For a flat fee of $500 a year, each patient receives two house calls and an unlimited number of consultations via IM or e-mail, as long as they live in Brooklyn. Parkinson is out to serve the uninsured creative types in his neighborhood (which happens to be the hipster-haven of Wiliamsburg). And to that end, Parkinson has surveyed over 2,000 doctors to find the lowest prices available for scans, imaging, and tests.

Parkinson plans to charge $150-$200 for additional house calls beyond the first two, but says "I'll probably make some exceptions or accept artwork for my services."

From Wired

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Today, Verizon unveiled its new fall lineup of phones, the highlight of which, the LG Voyager, takes aim squarely at the iPhone. Sure, it's a dead ringer for Apple's Jesus phone, but it's those similarities as well as some significant differences that make the Voyager a suitable alternative to Apple's handset -- at least for those of us Verizon customers not interested in jumping ship for AT&T.

The similarities between the phones don't end with the slick black case. They both have a 2 megapixel camera in common as well as a touch screen, which on the Voyager, runs the slickest, most user-friendly interface we've ever seen on a Verizon or LG handset (it's actually based on the one used for the LG Prada Phone). Of course, there's e-mail and text messaging like there is on the iPhone.

It's what the Voyager does differently that's got us excited. First of all, it runs on Verizon's high-speed EV-DO network, which is significantly speedier than the AT&T EDGE network the iPhone is chained to. Voyager also has GPS, which is lacking on the iPhone. It doesn't have a hard drive like iPhone does, but it does have a slot for a microSDHC card, which currently top out at 8 gigabytes but will soon be achieving capacities of up to 32 gigabytes.

Lastly, the Voyager is actually clamshell phone, hiding a second (giant) screen and full QWERTY keyboard under it exterior. Our pals at Engadget Mobile got their hands on the Voyager this morning, and while they say the Voyager is a bit meaty in size, they're equally as impressed with it as we are. No price has been announced, but expect to see the Voyager in stores around Thanksgiving.

In addition to the Voyager, Verizon announced that is will carry the BlackBerry Pearl -- no different than what you get from other providers -- and the Samsung Juke, which is positioned as an entry-level music phone with its click wheel and 2 gigabytes of built-in storage.

There's also a second LG phone, the Venus, which puts an interesting spin on the touch screen craze –- whether good or bad remains to be seen. The screen is actually split into two parts, and only the bottom half is a touch screen. The top half is your standard cell phone screen, the content/context of which changes the buttons displayed on the lower half.

For more, check out Engadget Mobile's in-depth photo galleries of the new launches.

From Engadget Mobile

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Mobile, instant, always-on access to everyone you know is the new obnoxious forefront in communications technology. A new start-up calling itself Trumpia, has decided to take the obsession with constant communication to its absurd illogical extreme.

Sign up with Trumpia, then betray your own sense of decency by inputting all of your friends' contact info ... and we mean all of it. Input, e-mail, cell phone and instant messenger information. Then you can "blast" all of your friends at once, hitting them on every communication device possible short of a ham radio.

That way, no one can possibly claim that they didn't get your message -- unless they were lost for a few days in the Himalayas. In fact, the only way your (soon-to-be former) friends can stop you from "blasting" them, is to sign up for the service themselves and block you.

If you think the whole thing sounds kind of shady and caustic, you're not alone.

From TechCrunch

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Gmail, everybody's favorite beta product, may be getting ready for its first major update since launching in 2004. At the time of launch, Gmail was revolutionary, breaking the mold for what a Web mail application could be with unprecedented ease of use, storage and attachment size allowance. But in the ensuing years, Gmail has aged and other services have caught up. While many still consider it to be the best Web mail system, it could definitely stand to add a few new features.

Now, it seems an update is in the works -- this according to texts and screen shots spotted by Google translators. You see, Google gets help from everyday users across the globe with translating text for the localized versions of the company's own sites and services. Google saves a bunch of money by using the general public instead of several expensive translation services -- unfortunately that makes it kind of hard for the company to keep any secrets. Just check of the screen shots of Gmail-related text awaiting translation into various languages.

One of the rumored new features is one that many of us has been clamoring for: the integration of Google Gears -- an experimental technology that allows you to access Google's online services when you're offline. That would give Gmail users the ability to read and draft messages when they're away from an Internet connection, something that's always been a shortfall of Web-based e-mail.


Also amongst the piles of untranslated texts are phrases that seem to point to an account activity tracking feature. So, if you suspect your girlfriend of snooping, or are just plain paranoid that someone may have gotten hold of your password, you'll be able to see when and where your account has been accessed from.

When Gmail might receive this update, or how drastic the facelift might be are currently unknown. Here's hoping the answers are 'soon' and 'really drastic, with out ruining what we already love'.

From Googling Google

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The Internet has become so ingrained in our lives that a full fifth of Americans admit to having less sex so they can spend more time online. Those 20 percent happen to be the most extreme cases, but have we become a nation of connectivity addicts?

A survey conducted by advertising agency JWT aimed to find out exactly how reliant Americans are on their Internet connections and mobile phones. The study found that we cannot pull ourselves away from the safety of a broadband connection for too long. Some highlights include:

• 15 percent of Americans say they can survive just a day or less without the Internet.
  
• 21 percent say they last a "couple of days" until digital starvation.
  
• 19 percent go a "few" days without it.
  
• One fifth say they can stay offline for a whole week -- the same number who are willing to give up sex for MySpace and blogs.

According to Ann Mack, Director of Trend Spotting (her title, not ours) at JWT, Americans feel anxious and disconnected when away from their Internet connections. Forty-eight percent percent say they feel something important is missing when they are offline and 28 percent say they spend less time socializing face-to-face because of the amount of time spent online.

We know that Internet addiction is becoming a problem -- we just didn't know it was this wide spread. Obviously we love the Internet as much as everyone else (how else would you read us with out it?), but trust us, sex and face-to-face interaction with other people is much more fun than making sure you reply to that comment on your blog.

From iTnews

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This whole in-flight Wi-Fi thing is really taking off (induce pun groans now). Alaska Air is the latest company to announce it will be testing wireless broadband access on its jets.

Starting in the Spring of '08. Alaska Air will outfit one of its Boeing 737's with a system from Row 44, a company that specializes in Internet service for the commercial aviation industry. If it all goes well, the airline will outfit all 114 of its craft with the service which allows Wi-Fi enabled devices like PDA's and laptops to access the internet, e-mail, and even an on-board library of entertainment content.

There's no word on whether Alaska Air's system will allow access to VOIP communications like Skype as Virgin America's will, but it is highly likely. So even if in-flight cell calls don't become common place, we still may need to listen to every phone addict with a Skype account (by the way, we really love Skype, seriously... just not on our planes).

From Engadget

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When Richard Branson rolled out the Virgin America airline in August, he promised us in-flight Internet -- though left out the how and when. While the latter is still a mysterious "sometime in 2008," the how will be dealt with through a newly announced partnership with a company called AirCell. AirCell will provide air-to-ground broadband Wi-Fi access to Virgin's fleet, allowing passengers to access the Internet through Virgin's seatback entertainment center or via their own Wi-Fi enabled laptops, smart phones, PDAs or new iPod Touches. In addition to Web access, the seatback system will provide e-mail access and chat through AIM, Yahoo! Messenger, MSN and Google Talk.

But, that's not all. The seatback system also supports Skype, as will passengers' own laptops and BlackBerrys. Despite an FCC ban on in-flight cell phone calls, this definitely opens the door to in-flight voice chatting. The horror....the horror...

From Engadget

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