The one-size-fits-all security software installed by IT departments is often not the best possible solution as it can produce false positives as well as miss actual attacks. Researchers at Intel Research Berkeley have recognized that problem and are working on laptop-based security software that adjusts to the way an individual uses the internet to better detect malicious activity.

“One reason security breaches are so rampant is that most of our machines look the same,” says Nina Taft, a researcher with the program. “When a hacker breaks into one machine, he can break into all of them… We’re trying to inject diversity into computers.”

Traditional security software has a preset threshold. When internet activity goes above that level, the software triggers an alarm suggesting that the computer might be infected. These kinds of infections are mainly due to botnets, which are enormous quantities of infected computers acting together to send out spam and do other malicious deeds. However, users who use the internet more than average could have to deal with frequent false alarms, and users who barely use their connection might never know if their computer got infected. Read more »

WiFi is commonplace in today’s large, booming cities. You can probably find a few hotspots walking around on any street. However, for rural areas, especially in undeveloped nations, WiFi and any other kinds of internet access are hard to come by.

Intel is trying to solve the problem with its Rural Connectivity Program (RCP). The company is utilizing a new technology consisting of a processor, software radios, and an antenna to enable wireless signals to travel up to 60 miles.

Wireless access is the way to go in these countries, as there are several problems with putting in wires. They are too expensive, too long for a good signal, and would often get dug up and sold.

So far, the RCP has been tested in India, Panama, Vietnam, and South Africa with successful results. “We’re seeing a lot of interest in the industry,” said Jeff Galinovsky, a senior platform manager at Intel. “Every time we talk about this, they say, ‘We need this yesterday’.”

This is a great program, and combined with efforts to make cheap laptops targeted at these countries will help them catch up to the information age. It will be great to see what the internet is like with so many more people with such different perspectives on board.

DigiTimes is reporting that, according to several sources, Intel is planning on launching the world’s first quad-core CPU for laptops - the Core 2 Extreme QX9300 - in Q3 of 2008.

Starting at an initial price of $1,038 (yes, that’s probably more than the price of the average laptop today), Intel doesn’t expect quad-core CPUs to become standard in laptops until late 2009. Even that, we think, is a conservative estimate. Dual-core CPUs are more than enough for most applications today, and it will be hard to find applications that can utilize all four cores in the near future.

The Core 2 Extreme QX9300 will be manufactured in a 45nm process and will run at 2.53GHz. It will feature a 12MB L2 cache.

Tech jargon aside, this thing will be very fast for a laptop processor, assuming that operating systems and programs can utilize all of its power. At those prices though, don’t expect to see the processor from mainstream manufacturers such as HP and Dell any time soon.

As you may know, the MacBook Air uses specially developed Intel Core 2 Duo chips that are much smaller than regular chips. These processors may soon start appearing in other PCs as well. The chips could potentially be used to create competition for “the world’s thinnest and lightest notebook” (which as far we’re concerned is fantastic news - anything that pushes the market and the industry forward through competition is highly welcomed).

Company names weren’t specified, but as of now there are 2 manufacturers already working the design into their next machine.

We look forward to seeing what kinds of portable and lightweight laptops will come out of this, as they will have a hard time competing with the good looks and classiness of the MacBook Air.

Cell phones might soon have the ability to predict when they’ll be plugged in and could even intelligently estimate how many calls a user is likely to make over a period of time, based on findings in a paper[pdf] by researchers at Intel and Rutgers University. They would then use that information to provide better battery life.

The devised system, dubbed CABMAN (for context-aware battery management architecture
for mobile devices*), would be based on three main principles:

- The availability of crucial applications should not be compromised by non-important ones
- Opportunities for charging should be predicted to allow devices to determine how much energy they can expect to have, instead of simply going by the battery level
- Context, such as location information, can be used to predict charging opportunities

CABMAN would predict where it can be charged by learning which towers are nearby when it’s plugged in. Then, by tracking location and processing call logs, the system knows when to alert a user to plug the cell phone in or to stop using battery intensive applications (or not do anything at all if it thinks the phone will be plugged in soon). This, for example, could know when to turn off a phone’s music player on an airplane if the phone won’t be able to make any calls soon.

A prototype was tested using data from another project. The software was on average 12 minutes away from predicting charging opportunities - a great result. The future call time prediction didn’t work as well, so more time is needed to perfect that aspect.

This research is showing us a very interesting future for cell phones, indeed. With this kind of “smarts” our future phones will be all but bulletproof, predicting our behavior perfectly and adapting themselves to suit our needs. Hopefully the wait will not be too long.

* Yes, we know that “mobile devices” doesn’t start with an “N” and have no idea who was responsible for naming this project and why this slipped through.