Story Archives of 'Computers'

The Italian design firm Arduino makes one of the hottest circuit boards used by gadget builders today. Since mass production began two years ago, the company has sold about 50,000 units - not bad for a small start-up nestled in the medieval foothills of Milan.

But there’s something different about Arduino – their business model. They give everything away. On their Website you can download all the design plans, send them off to a Chinese factory, mass-produce the boards, and sell them yourself. There are no patents. You can pocket the change without paying Arduino a dime. Sounds crazy? It’s part of a new movement called open source hardware.

WIRED Magazine contributing editor Clive Thompson wrote about Arduino and this new trend in technology, and he joins Word of Mouth with more on how open source hardware makes sense as a business model.

(Photo by James Day)

For decades, inventors have been working on ways to convert the natural kinetics of the sea into electricity. Just one year ago this October, the first-ever wave farm kicked into action off the coast of Portugal - and plans are in the works to build them in the waters surrounding Scotland, England and California.

Now, it appears that Google wants to tap into that power, too. The blogosphere is abuzz over a patent that the Internet giant filed for a device called a "floating data center" - a large group of computers, set out to sea, powered by the motion of the ocean, and kept cool by its water.

Data farms are notorious energy-suckers: they’re using 1.5 percent of the nation’s electricity supply. They’re called the SUVs of the tech world. It’s comparable to about five 1,000-megawatt power plants.

Martin LaMonica wrote about Google’s plans for a floating data center for CNet.com, and he joins Word of Mouth with more.

(Image from Google's patent application courtesy of Google)

When you picture a stereotypical detective, it can be hard to shake the image of Sherlock Holmes clutching a big magnifying glass, looking for clues. But these days, if you’re out to solve a tricky crime, you may be better served with a laptop computer than the old-fashioned tools of the trade. Today on Word of Mouth, we meet two men whose detective work revolves around ones and zeroes.

Hany Farid is revolutionizing the field of digital image forensics – that’s the art of telling when a photograph has been faked. Modern technology is making it easier and easier for the average person to manipulate an image, and it’s getting harder and harder to detect the fakes. Hany’s job is to keep up with the technology and create tools that can separate the real from the phony. He’s professor and associate chair of Computer Science at Dartmouth College, and he has an article about his work in the June issue of Scientific American.

We also talk with Richard Mislan, assistant professor of Computer and Information Technology at Purdue University. He recently organized the first-ever Mobile Forensics World Conference in Chicago. It looked at the ways police can glean information from confiscated cell phones to help them solve crimes.

(Photo by József Sasvári)

Every time you submit a Google search or a Mapquest query, a data center somewhere processes your request. Data centers (or "server farms") are huge rooms filled with rows and rows of whirring machines. These massive computers keep us all connected, and it takes a huge amount of energy to keep them running and to keep them from overheating.

NHPR reporter Amy Quinton is working on a story about efforts to reduce the energy these data centers use, and she talks with Word of Mouth host Virginia Prescott about it.