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Technology ONLINE social networks might soon be more than a way to meet people: the sites your MySpace buddies view could sharpen up your web search results. Search engines index the web using “spider” software that crawls from site to site by following links from existing pages. However, this was just not personal enough for computer scientist Alan Mislove of Rice University in Houston, Texas. With colleagues in Germany, he has developed PeerSpective, which creates a personalised list of results by recording the pages viewed by members of a social network and bringing the pages up when another member of the group searches for a similar topic. “When a physicist searches for polonium, she probably expects a different level of information than a layperson,” says Mislove. CAUTION: carbon nanotubes may be dangerous when wet. Nanotubes are hydrophobic, meaning they clump together in pure water rather than dispersing. This led to the belief that they would not spread out when released by factories into rivers and lakes. However, researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology 43 per cent of users of social networking websites rate the virtual friends they “meet” online as highly as their real-world friends Charging motorists to use the roads is the only way to encourage them to drive less, and so reduce congestion and slash greenhouse gas emissions, the UK government was told by a Treasury transport committee last week. One factor standing in the way of introducing such a scheme, in the UK and elsewhere, is the cost of building the roadside gantries and antennas needed to mark toll zones, and installing wireless transceivers in every car. However, transport researchers in Taiwan say a cheap way to manage road charging schemes is already in place: the cellphone networks. Whole nations are covered by the networks, which are divided up into handy zones, and almost everybody has a transceiver, says Wen Jing Huang of China Engineering Consultants in Taipei. If a cellphone user’s car crosses to another cell, the transition could be registered by software and used to bill the driver. Motorists might be allowed to travel for free close to where they live, for instance, but charged when they drive further afield, he suggests. Huang accepts not everyone has a phone and those that do may switch them off, but he says the economic advantages of the system – in needing no new physical infrastructure – far outweigh any disadvantage as long as most people pay up. “It would be a very simple and quick solution,” he says. The UK Department of Transport is funding 10 trials over the next four years to see which systems work best. “We need to see that schemes work before we make any decision about the technology,” says a spokesman. ‘USE PHONE CELLS AS TOLL GATES’ in Atlanta have shown this is not the case by comparing particle dispersion in filtered water and unfiltered water from Georgia’s Suwannee river. They found that when the tubes interact with decomposed plant and animal matter in the river water, they stop clumping and disperse through the solution (Environmental Science and Technology, DOI: 10.1021/ es061817g). The findings are likely to raise fresh concerns about the safety of nanotubes. Teaching toddlers to be patient is the aim of Queensland University of Technology in Brisbane, Australia, which has developed a toy called a Puggle that resembles an echidna or spiny anteater. The Puggle has smooth, retractable spines that light up one at a time, whereupon the child has to press the spine to make it pop up. Patience comes in because the child has to wait for longer intervals between each one lighting up. When all the spines are up, the child is rewarded with a sound and light display. Rumours that Apple is to launch a wireless iPod or a cellphone intensified last week when the company filed a patent on a ceramic casing that is transparent to radio waves, avoiding the need for an external antenna. In July, Apple filed a patent on software that wirelessly swaps information between a hand-held device and a PC. GIZMO 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 1 2 AVERAGE TIME HACKERS TOOK TO EXPLOIT A FLAW – 3 DAYS AVERAGE TIME HACKERS TOOK TO EXPLOIT A FLAW – 3 DAYS January–June 2006 AVERAGE TIME SOFTWARE DEVELOPERS TOOK TO DEVELOP A PATCH– 31 DAYS The view of the US National Institute of Standards and Technology, which last week issued a white paper urging the federal government to adopt electoral technology that provides “a paper summary of each ballot, which voters review and election officials save for recounts” ( The Washington Post, 1 December) “In practical terms, paperless voting cannot be made secure” –Phones could monitor where you drive– ANDREW COX/CORBIS www.newscientist.com 9 December 2006 | NewScientist | 29 SOURCE: CENTER FOR THE DIGITAL FUTURE SOURCE: SYMANTEC Web hits from my PeerSpective Dirty water sets nanotubes free OPEN TO ATTACK Computers can be vulnerable to hackers for up to 28 days before software flaws are plugged
