Jim Giles

Inside the race to hack the Kinect

In a few short days, hackers reverse engineered Microsofts Kinect game controller to launch a new era in human-computer interaction

Scareware: the inside story

Follow the trail to a sophisticated software fraud that sets an unenviable new benchmark for internet scams

Barcodes help objects tell their stories

Linking physical objects to an online database of information about them could help bring museum exhibits to life

Blogs and tweets could predict the future

Analysing peoples online musings could be used to predict everything from car sales to unemployment rates and stock prices

Born to be wired

Stunning performance, awesome economy, no compromise. Electric cars are coming of age, says Jim Giles

Learn a language, translate the web

Free online lessons aim to turn willing students into a commercial translating juggernaut. But can they compete with professional linguists?

Can biofuels rescue American prairies

This article looks at the increased production of ethanol (an alternativeto gasoline) from corn in Americas Midwest and its effect on the environment. At a meeting of the Ecological Society of America (ESA), in August 2007, it was argued that the expansion of corn ethanol production is damaging soils, threatening wildlife, particularly ground nesting birds, while doing little to cut US greenhouse gas emissions. Corn production requireslarge amounts of fertiliser which is energy intensive to produce and as aresult corn ethanol releases at most 25% more energy than is required to grow and process the crop. Studies presented at the ESA meeting suggest that cellulosic ethanol from native grasses (as an alternative to corn ethanol) could fix many of the problems associated with corn ethanol. Robert Mitchell from the University of Nebraska, who has been monitoring 10 farms plots of switch grass since 2000, reported that based on yields from these plots ethanol produced from such grasses could yield up to 15 times moreenergy than it uses in production, a huge improvement on corn. Political considerations are seen as a big obstacle, however for grass cultivation to take off.

Virtual entrepreneurs and griefers spoil the fantasy of online worlds

Residents of virtual worlds are making millions but they are bringing laws from the real world with them, spoiling the fantasy for other residents

Social-bots infiltrate Twitter and trick human users

The bots gained close to 250 followers from the community and received over 200 responses to the tweets they sent

Second Life – under attack

Take Second Life too seriously and you risk attracting the griefers. We asked an attacker and one of his victims how it felt.