Are U.S. passport cards and new state driver’s licenses with RFID truly secure? Not everyone is convinced that new security cards are a good idea. UW CSE’s Yoshi Kohno is quoted. See the full article in Technology Review‘s January/February issue.
We provided earlier coverage on Yoshi’s research and problems with RFID passport cards. Read more →
Microsoft has a new tool that automatically generates backup music to go with original melodies and lyrics sung into a computer.
Songsmith, which debuted today at the International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, lets people explore songwriting. The software first analyzes your vocal melody using existing pitch-tracking technology. Then an algorithm the researchers built selects musical chords that will go well with the melody. Songsmith evolved from MySong, a joint research project by Microsoft researchers Dan Morris and Sumit Basu and CSE’s own Ian Simon, who worked with them as an intern in 2007.
Read the full article here.
(TechFlash notes the “cringe-worthy” video and the derisive buzz it has attracted in the YouTube comments in this post. Almost 300,000 views at this 14 January writing! -SMR)
(ars technica offers this detailed review of SongSmith. -SMR) Read more →
The regular and wonderful Wired Magazine feature Jargon Watch seeks out and exposes emerging English language words and phrases as they are minted to describe our changing world. In current issue 17.01, feature editor Jonathon Keats highlights the term cloaker, coined by CSE graduate student Tamara Denning in the paper Absence Makes the Heart Grow Fonder: New Directions for Implantable Medical Device Security (joint with Kevin Fu and Tadayoshi Kohno) to describe a device designed to keep heartless hackers from altering the radio-controlled settings on pacemakers. Read more →
Lance Fortnow calls UW CSE PhD candidate Prasad Raghavendra‘s paper Optimal algorithms and inapproximability results for every CSP? the best computational complexity paper of the year in a Computational Complexity blog entry 2008 Complexity Year in Review. Prasad is advised by Venkat Guruswami. Read more →
This article in ITWorld reports on a recently-revealed 2005 patent application by the National Security Agency for a newly-described technique for detecting tampering with network communication, based upon network delays. CSE’s Tadayoshi Kohno is quoted.
“The neat thing about this particular patent is that they look at the differences between the network layers… This whole problem space has a lot of potential, [although] I don’t know if this is going to be the final solution that people end up using.” Read more →
Anthony Tether, the head of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, spoke about his nearly eight years at DARPA in an interview with the EE Times. Tether states he has reinvigorated DARPA’s innovative spirit during his tenure; critics claim he has cut back on basic research. CSE’s Ed Lazowska commented, “there was tremendous deterioration in the agendas of specific agencies and DARPA is a prime example. DARPA’s focus became transitioning existing research results into products for the military.”
Read the full article here. Read more →
Joint dub (UW Human-Computer Interaction and Design Laboratory) and Intel Research Seattle research projects UbiFit and UbiGreen are the Computing Research Highlight of the Week at the Computing Community Consortium. Both projects use visual feedback on a cellphone screen– UbiFit to promote sticking with your personal excercise program, UbiGreen to promote environmentally-friendly transportation choices.
We reported on local media attention attracted by UbiFit in November here. Read more →
In October, CSE Professor Yoky Matsuoka presented a lecture called Where Humans and Robots Connect in the University of Washington College of Engineering Fall Lecture Series. UWTV will air video of the talk three times in early January (Monday,January 5 at 5:00 PM, Thursday, January 8 at 9:00 AM, and Saturday, January 10 at 2:30 AM, all times Pacific).
You can also download MP3 audio or MPEG-4 video from the UWTV site, or stream video in Quicktime or Windows Media. Read more →
Each year, the Computing Research Association recognizes undergraduates from across North America who have excelled at research in their CRA Outstanding Undergraduate Awards program. Our friends at University of Virginia have compiled a list of the number of students who have been recognized over the past ten years. We’re Number One!!! Congratulations to all of UW CSE’s superb undergraduates. Read more →
The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation awarded prizes to ten not-for-profit institutions. UW CSE’s own WebAnywhere was one of this year’s recipients. Vint Cerf, presenting these awards at the Fall Task Force meeting of the Coalition for Networked Information (CNI) said the following:
“The MATC Awards have a history of recognizing projects that improve accessibility for people with visual or other impairments, and this year is no exception. The next awardee is the University of Washington, for Project WebAnywhere. By providing a screen-reader as a Web server component, WebAnywhere allows an institution to provide screen-reading functionality to any computer, anywhere in the world, as long as it has speakers, an Internet connection, and a Web browser. Because screen readers can cost thousands of dollars per machine and cannot be moved easily, the total benefit to an institution can be considerable—and the improved mobility for persons with visual impairments generates substantial benefits for students and faculty.
Accepting the award for UW is Jeff Bigham, a PhD candidate in Computer Science and the creator of WebAnywhere.”
Additional information on the awards may be viewed here. More information on the awards ceremony, including podcast interviews with recipients, may be viewed at the CNI website which should be available around December 10, 2008. Read more →