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Scientists say they know you better than you do

Do you intend to be nice to your co-workers today? Do you intend to spend a little longer in the shower so that your personal crevices are spotless? Do you intend to write that friend request to Mark Zuckerberg and keep your list of friends private?

Well, a group of scientists at UCLA would like to thank you for words, but prefers to scan your brains to prove to you what you really intend to do.

If this all sounds a little macabre, then you clearly don't intend to follow science's inexorable path. According to Reuters, a team … Read more

System tweaker

There's no shortage of software designed to boost, tweak, or otherwise speed up sluggish PCs, enhance your computing security, and clean up your disks to advance both goals. Uniblue Systems' SpeedUpMyPC 2010 describes its mission in its name. It combines several tools in one interface, including a system scanner, RAM optimizer, memory cleaner, start-up manager, and CPU booster, all optimized for the latest versions of Windows.

SpeedUpMyPC's interface is typical of system-boosting utilities, simple and colorful with large, clearly labeled controls and prominent visual and text warnings of your unoptimized system's shortcomings. Scanning our system identified numerous &… Read more

Neat newsreader

Those who need an old-school newsreader could do worse than DaanSystems' NewsReactor. You can use it to search for, combine, and download binaries in Usenet newsgroups via as many as six servers. It can group similar files together and claims advanced error detection.

NewsReactor's trial version is limited to 50 uses, which a nag screen starts counting down when you first open the program. A First Time Wizard that can be reactivated at any time from the File menu lets you scan automatically for news servers or manually enter your server; we chose the latter. The wizard quickly established … Read more

Improving CT scans to speed up lung cancer diagnosis

Currently, radiologists measure the sizes of potentially cancerous lung nodules by measuring their largest widths using a two-dimensional computer screen. (The method widely used to do this is called RECIST.) Now, researchers are investigating volumetrics, by which they can measure nodules in 3D.

Thanks to work done by a team of researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), in the simplest of cancer cases, volumetrics appears to reveal volume changes far more precisely than currently possible on 2D screens, which could cut diagnosis time from six months down to four weeks, the researchers estimate.

"We found … Read more

ScanCafe to raise prices, improve Web interface

The good news: ScanCafe, a photo digitization service that relies on relatively inexpensive workers in India for the labor-intensive task, said it will soon start beta-testing a process that makes it easier for customers to review scans online.

The bad news: ScanCafe is raising some of its prices on May 10.

CEO Sam Allen announced the move in a message to customers Thursday. "We wanted to get the news to you as soon as we could, in case you had a large scanning project you wanted to get started on," he said. Allen didn't detail which prices … Read more

Prizmo for Mac turns your camera into a scanner

Have you always wanted a scanner, but held back because of size and cost? Do you have a Mac and a digital camera? Then good news: Prizmo for Mac offers a good enough solution to let accomplish most of your scanning needs without the extra hardware.

The $40 software, made by Belgium-based Creaceed, has long been offered as an alternative to the pack-in software that often comes with flatbed scanners. Its latest version sports three handy features, one of which can turn your digital camera into a very powerful text-archiving tool.

The first new feature is camera tethering. This lets you attach a tether-ready SLR or point-and-shoot to your computer, then have the app automatically import the shot as you take it. There's not a whole lot of user dialogue here to let you know your camera is attached. In my test, I simply connected my Nikon D90 (which does not feature USB mass storage support) and began taking photos, and it did the rest.

Users can also grab photo files from their hard drives, or from a camera that's attached in USB mass storage mode, although I found the latter a little jittery when trying to browse for a single file on a crowded memory card. The app would only let me see the top 40 shots or so, and I couldn't scroll down--a problem I didn't have when browsing the same set of files from a USB-powered memory card reader.

To go along with the tethering feature is curviture correction; this lets you fix warping due to the natural bend of pages. The tool itself is simple to use, but lacks some much-needed automation. You can, for instance, only work on one page at a time, so if you've snapped both pages of an open book, you have to open each one individually. This isn't a huge dealbreaker unless you're trying to archive something large, but it does slow things down.… Read more

Measure the depth, quality of your sleep at night

This just in from Japanese health monitor manufacturer Tanita, a sensor mat that monitors the quality of your sleep.

The device is called Sleep Scan, and the idea is simple enough. Place the mat beneath your mattress and it tracks your body motion, breathing, and heart rate throughout to provide a sleep score.

Sleep Scan stores data on a secure digital high capacity (SDHC) card, and Tanita suggests that the 2GB SD card can store about 500 sleep cycles of data, unless you're like me and turn over like meat on a stick every five minutes, in which case … Read more

Sniff out nearby Wi-Fi

iStumbler is a free, Snow-Leopard-only tool that helps you sniff out nearby Wi-Fi networks, even if you're just stumbling around with an open laptop.

iStumbler has a clean and helpful interface: on launch, it automatically displays all networks in your vicinity in a chart that shows each network's name, mode, protocol (e.g., 802.11n vs. 802.11g), security (anything from Open to WEP to BSS), noise, channel, frequency, MAC address, vendor (e.g., Apple or Netgear), sample, geographic location, and last update time. You can move these columns around and sort the networks any which way you … Read more