O, mighty gods of technology! How beholden to you we are! You hold every facet of our lives in your cold, digital paws. And to remind us of just how much control you wield over our fragile lives, you decided to bring all of Montgomery County, Maryland to a standstill this week.

County technicians are still trying to figure out why a computer that controls all 750 traffic lights in the area crashed around 3 a.m., Wednesday. The computer, which oversees the timing and synchronization of the lights for the entire county, which itself includes several major suburbs of Washington, D.C., dates back to the Carter administration and is in the process of being phased out. But, apparently, the system couldn't hold onto life any longer and turned the entire county into a sea of glowing brake lights. Thanks to the meltdown, the grid failed to switch into rush-hour mode and, as a result, did not leave individual lights green for long enough to keep traffic flowing.

Let's say that a new traffic light is installed at an intersection. On one side of the light is a car dealership, and the light in front of the dealership leads onto a highway. Now, let's say that when the light was programmed, a mistake was made -- and every time the light changes, it is actually green in all directions for seven seconds. How long do you think such a mistake would go unnoticed? A few days? A few months at most? How about 29 years? According to Japan's Daily Yomiuri, that's how long it took authorities in Fukushima, Japan to notice that a traffic light installed on National Route 49 was improperly programmed.

Amazingly, until June 19, the two-way green light had never caused an accident. The light's luck ran out, however, when a driver tried to exit the car dealership at the same time that another driver was following the green light onto the road, and the two cars collided.

In the occasional rush to get to the office on time, just about all of us have either illegally driven in the carpool lane or exceeded posted speed limits. Sometimes, you get caught and pay a fine, and sometimes, you get away scot-free. Call it luck and thank the Lord, but drivers in Manchester, England have something else to thank for eluding recent traffic fines -- the Conficker worm.

The Register reports that after Conficker infected the city's computer systems in February, more than 1,600 drivers who were spotted on camera driving illegally in bus lanes were saved from paying fines totaling £43,000, or about $71,300. In response, the city disabled all USB ports on government computers and outlawed memory sticks, which it claims caused the infection. All in all, the worm cost the city nearly £1.5 million, or $2.4 million, between unpaid fines, consultants' fees, clean-up costs, extra staff, and a new backup strategy for its system.

The Internet is a seemingly endless resource for our watching, listening, and chatting needs. Bandwidth, however, is not. Cisco Systems, the mobile networking company, released a report earlier this week suggesting that global Internet traffic is growing exponentially. Scientific American said that Cisco needed a newer term -- zettabyte, or one trillion gigabytes -- to measure both the amount of uploading and downloading traffic on the Web and the bandwidth required to accommodate it.

The release has a lot of interesting statistics, including the prediction that the Web will nearly quadruple in size over the next four years. Cisco claims that, by 2013, what amounts to 10 billion DVDs will cross the Internet each month. In other words, it will take over a million years to watch just one month's worth of Web video traffic. The findings point to "consumer hyperactivity" -- that with Web-enabled phones and mobile devices, more powerful computers, and multitasking, growth will only increase. For such a surge in volume, networks must be able to accommodate the growth.

There's no denying that Twitter has exploded. In fact, despite our love for the service, we're getting a little tired of reporting every tiny little piece of info that is even vaguely Twitter-related (at least we're done reporting on every celebrity that signs up for the service). But today, we got a genuinely interesting piece of news; Twitter's traffic boom has not been driven by the usual 18-to-24-year-old social networking crowd.

According to a report from Reuters, the visitors pushing Twitter traffic into the stratosphere are 24-to-54-year-olds. In fact, folks in that age bracket make up just as much of Twitter's demographic (about 10-percent) as those in the 18-to-24 crowd. We find that surprising, considering that other cutting-edge social networks like MySpace and Facebook were originally propelled to the forefront through the power of the younger generation.

This soooo should have been a scene in 'Revenge of the Nerds.'

On Wednesday, someone was able to hack into a road safety sign in the Boston area, alerting drivers to the undead. It's been done before, but never so hilariously!

According to the blog i-hacked.com, some road signs are easily hacked thanks to unlocked instrument panels and an easily accessible text-entry system. And while in the hands of a hilarious nerd it's no problem, one can imagine the chaos that could be started should the wrongs hands get to them. To see some other examples of hacked signs (and some other signs that are just plain messed up), click on the gallery below. [From: CNET]

At year-end (2008), Internet traffic figures file into newsrooms, social networking site Facebook stands victorious over its peers, according to BizJournals.com.

Undergoing a growth spurt of 127-percent over the course of 2008, Facebook finally overtook social networking giant MySpace by drawing 222 million users to Facebook.com in December. Facebook's first month to beat out MySpace was last April.

Not limited to the social networking arena, Facebook's success is impressive even in the most general category; Facebook.com registered as the Internet's seventh most popular destination in December, trailing only Web giants Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, AOL, Wikipedia and eBay.

Let's just hope that Facebook can learn a lesson from MySpace and implement stronger security; few things chase away business like spammers and scammers. [From: BizJournals]

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Traffic lights exist to control the flow of traffic, ensuring that we don't all go driving like maniacs on the road. But what if there was a technology that made it so we never had to stop at a light -- ever? Believe it or not, that's the idea behind Audi's new Travolution device -- and if early test results are to be believed, the wireless attachment could significantly reduce traffic congestion as well as exhaust emissions.

By connecting wirelessly to "smart" traffic lights, the Travolution calculates the distance of an upcoming light and then tells you how fast you need to go in order to reach the light as soon as it turns green. It's just like driving down your favorite road where you have the timing of the signal changes memorized, only it'll work with every road (well, the ones that have intelligent signals). By having cars constantly moving, traffic inevitably speeds up, gas mileage improves due to less stopping and starting, and less idling means less CO2 production. Can this device do no wrong?

Well, it's clear that the Travolution system has many potential benefits, and as mentioned, a two-year test that Audi conducted saw significant improvements in traffic congestion. But remember that in less than optimum situations (e.g. standstill traffic), the device may not provide any benefit at all. And don't forget that traffic lights will need to be refitted and reprogrammed to be compatible with the Travolution. So while we love the idea of a traffic-free city, we won't hold our breath for an actual release date. [From: Daily Mail]

We dig the idea in theory, we really do, but we can definitely see this causing more harm than good. Starting this fall, San Francisco will begin a trial involving wireless parking sensors in 6,000 of its 24,000 metered spaces, enabling antsy drivers to be alerted via street signs or cell phones when a spot becomes available. Only one problem -- give 50 anxious motorists the same message that a single spot is unoccupied, and you've just created a bona fide mess. Though it'd probably be fun to watch from the sidelines, wouldn't you agree? [Source: NYTimes via Core77]

We have all ideas (okay, so we know it for a fact) that the Los Angeles Traffic Cam was designed for those living in LA, but we can't help but imagine how drivers in less congested cities could use this to make their own daily commute not seem so bad.

NBC4 and 3rd Dimension have teamed up to beam out live video and nearly live still shots from some 270 LA-area traffic cameras to those with compatible mobiles, and being that it's ad-supported, the whole thing is completely free to end users. Of course, for all you know, they could just loop a clip of gridlocked traffic during rush hour and call it reality. Sadly, said idea would almost work. [Source: LATimes Blogs]

Free advice from Switched: Don't moon traffic cameras. Not only is it juvenile, but it could quite possibly get you in trouble with the law, at least in the UK. Yes, that image on the right is of a man's rear end. The man thought he'd have a little fun with the speed camera in Cramlington, England, but we guess he was unaware that the police could snap a picture at anytime with the camera, not just when a car speeds by.

Police now have the joker's license plate and registration and will be pursuing legal action, though he won't be facing prosecution. Instead, authorities will be issuing fines for public indecency and not wearing a seat belt.

All that just cause this guy thought he was funny. [Source: BBC, via: Boing Boing]

Microsoft has announced a new tool for drivers to avoid traffic jams. The service, called "Clearflow", calculates how tie-ups affect backups on local city streets which could mean more accurate rerouting along busy routes. There's no word yet on how this could be integrated into personal portable navigation devices.

According to a report in the New York Times, Microsoft's new Clearflow is the result of a five-year project by the company's artificial intelligence team at Microsoft Research laboratories. Clearflow predicts how "complex traffic interactions ... occur as traffic backs up on freeways and spills over onto city streets" in 72 different urban areas.

This is one more way Microsoft is trying to catch up with Google's array of online services, which do include maps with projected traffic delays, but Google's and other Web sites' traffic information is mainly limited to highways and major interchanges.

Mobile device users will be able to look up current traffic information but its still unclear if the service will soon be integrated into live traffic routing on GPS devices.

Garmin, for example, already allows its device users to connect with traffic information service provided by MSN Direct. Garmin users with a compatible antenna receive MSN Direct information which allows drivers to "find the best route through traffic, check traffic flow and receive accident warnings." It also provides information on local gas prices, movie times and weather forecasts.

Clearflow is supposed to be launched today but cursory looks at traffic route information for New York City and Chicago didn't seem to show side street information or alternative routes.

From The New York Times.


Related links:

• Trapster: Get Warnings About Speed Traps on Your Cell Phone
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Law breakers continue to take advantage of the social features of the Web 2.0 revolution. The latest tool in their arsenal is a mobile application called 'Trapster.' Trapster is not a reference to drug dealing or the slightly sad Marvell Comics Villain.

Trapster is about speed traps. Trapster lets drivers report the location of speed traps, red light cameras, and other locations where you're likely to get a ticket.

The service can use Wi-Fi or GPS to find your location and sends you audio alerts when you're approaching a ticket threat. Users report the locations of traps and are rated on their reliability. The system gives greater weight to those that are rated more reliably. Users can also customize the alerts they want, so that they only receive notice of red light cameras or the like. Information about red light cameras stays in Trapster's database indefinitely, but speed trap data is only kept for an hour, with the expectation that the officers will move on to a new location.

Trapster will work with many different mobile platforms, including Nokia's Symbian based handsets, Windows Mobile, and Blackberries. The service is available now, though the site was down when we tried to visit it.

From Comcast News

Related links:

• Online Tools for the Criminally Minded
• DASH Express Gets Live Traffic Updates From Other Drivers
• Mobile Phones Combat Traffic Congestion

The long-awaited DASH car navigation devices will soon hit store shelves and the promise of shared, live traffic data will soon be in consumers hands -- or rather their cars, guiding them around traffic tie ups and obstacles that other DASH-using drivers have already encountered and relayed back through the live data system.

DASH Navigation's two-way navigation devices relay information via GPRS to and from a central computer that collects speed and location data from each user's car, then computes a live, up-to-the-minute picture of what the traffic situation is in a certain area. (GPRS is typically utilized by mobile phones to send and receive SMS messages and data for WAP browsers, a mobile phone version of an Internet browser.)

DASH goes well beyond the current traffic guidance systems already used by in-car GPS makers, which compute historical traffic data (such as average speeds and rush hour changes). Some GPS devices also receive an RDS-TMC (Radio Data System Traffic Message Channel), which in many metro areas collates live traffic conditions through the ClearChannel system. Typically an RDS-TMC receiver adds about $100 to the price of a GPS device. Also, the information over RDS-TMC requires lots of human input and interpretation. DASH's system is more automated.

The DASH Express device doesn't just receive traffic information, but also acts as a transmitter, sending out constant information about its own situation on the road. This means the more DASH Express units that are deployed in a certain region the better the traffic information will be. According to our friends over at Engadget, who have put the new DASH Express through its paces already, the device and the traffic monitoring system work exceptionally well.

Traffic conditions along the routes they were traveling were reflected in the actual driving experience. While many traffic information services are good at helping navigate main highways and thoroughfares, the DASH system also lends itself to making your way through local streets. As long as a few cars with the DASH Express are on the road in your area, you should get up-to-date information. Plus, the information you and fellow DASH-using drivers gather is saved and integrated into the historical traffic data. So, in a sense, this is a system that is constantly getting smarter.

The company says consumers should not be worried about being monitored on the road or tracked by authorities. All data gathered will be anonymized and aggregated, so "Big Brother" can't snag you if you happen to be speeding or driving erratically.

The DASH Express also comes with a live Internet connection to Yahoo! Local search. Plus, you can send address information from Microsoft Outlook or a Web browser straight to your device -- or even have someone else do it for you if you're already on the road. Also, when new maps come out, the device is automatically updated via the GPRS signal.

What's the downside? According to Engadget, it's the initial price of $399 plus the monthly $13 fee required to receive the traffic data and local information. Even with a two-year service commitment, which drops the monthly fee down to $10, it adds up to a $640 initial outlay.

DASH's traffic solution has been the talk of many tech types for more than a year now while the company has been conducting tests near its Sunnyvale, Calif., home base. Now that its really on the market it will be interesting to see how many people decide to spring for this capable new device.

The DASH Express is shipping this week.

From Engadget.



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• DASH Product Page

If you've ever considered installing an inflatable dummy in your passenger seat so that you can use those temptingly fast-moving commuter lanes on the highway, you might want to think again -- at least if you live near Washington D.C. There local officials are installing infrared cameras to identify cars with too few passengers on board. The cameras will take body heat readings of a car's interior to determine how many occupants are inside. Too few people and a ticket will be automatically generated.

So, if you are going to use that inflatable dummy, at least make sure you fill it with warm water before hitting the highway. Just don't blame us if it springs a leak and gets your fancy new dash unit all wet.

Just for fun:

• Man stopped for dressing up kickboxing dummy to ride in commuter lane
• Drivers dressing up dogs and sex dolls to ride in the HOV lane
• Vintage male mannequin on sale for $1,895 on eBay

From Slashdot

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