ANTI-WI-FI PAINT WILL MAKE IT HARDER TO SCAM FREE INTERNET

The days of scamming free wireless Internet may soon be over. Researchers at the University of Tokyo have developed a paint that blocks wi-fi signals. So if a room is painted with this stuff, only computers inside the room would be able to pick up a wireless signal originating there. At a projected cost of $16 a kilo, the paint would be a cheap way of keeping hackers away from using your wireless to download dodgy files. The paint is infused with an aluminum-iron oxide that blocks all radio signals at 100Ghz, the frequency at which wi-fi transmits. As ingenious as this sounds, there are a couple of downsides. First, it won't protect the user from online threats, and of more importance to travelers, it will stop people from scamming free Internet while on the go. Perhaps we should tell the nice folks at the University of Tokyo "thanks but no thanks"?

WITH A WAVE, GOOGLE AIMS TO CONQUER THE NETWORK

Google recently invited 100,000 people to become the first users of its latest internet tool which aims to rival email, Twitter and Face book. Google Wave allows a limitless number of internet users anywhere in the world to have instant conversations and share files. The service combines aspects of email, instant messaging, social networking and web chat and is aimed at friends catching up with one another and business partners sharing documents. Among suggested uses for Google Wave are organizing trips, laboratory record-keeping and journalism. Users can join a wave - a group of web users - to have a discussion or share photos or documents. Everyone in the wave can see what other users are typing and any document placed into the wave can be accessed by all the users at the same time. In what sounds like a recipe for chaos, colleagues can work on the same document at the same time, seeing every change being made to the document as it is made. Among suggested uses for Google Wave are organizing trips, laboratory record-keeping and journalism. Bank sends confidential details to wrong e-mail address - so judge orders Google to suspend account It was developed by Lars and Jens Rasmussen, the brothers behind Google Maps. From 4pm yesterday Google invited 100,000 users, who had signed up to a waiting list, to try out Google Wave. It will be open to everyone in 2010.
A spokesman for Google touted the service as 'how email would look if it was invented today', adding: 'It would be collaborative and there would be no barriers between live instant messaging, email and documents and so on. 'That is what Google Wave is - email for the 21st century.