Perhaps not the oldest 
profession, but still considered just as sordid, spying has been with us throughout history. Julius Caesar of the Roman empire used encryption techniques to communicate with his generals, the Enigma machine was used in WW2 to create and interpret secret messages and recently News International was publicly humiliated during the recent phone hacking scandal where a number of its employees were accused of spying activities. As society has changed over time and we become more reliant on technology, the tools and tricks for accessing and protecting information have also evolved. The emergence of Smart phones in recent years presents a juicy target for espionage related activities as it is used by many of us for daily communication, banking, purchases and internet searches. With this in mind a team from the Department of Computer Science at the University of North Carolina (UNC) Chapel Hill have developed software that can read other peoples text messages from a distance of up to 60 metres away.
The software named iSpy uses video footage to read the target’s text messages. It works by identifying the magnified visual key press confirmation letters that pop up in larger bubbles when the target is typing a message into an iPhone or Android phone. The UNC team reported their findings in the paper iSpy: Automatic Reconstruction of Typed Input From Compromising Reflections at the Conference on Computer and Communications Security in Chicago. The iSpy team’s goal was not to create a commercial version of their software but simply to illustrate the potential vulnerability of peoples privacy when using their Smart phones.
According to the team’s research, iSpy recognises letters correctly 90% of the time. With high definition video it was possible for the team to read SMSes through reflections from sunglasses and even the victim’s eyes, all from a distance of 12 metres.
If this article is beginning to make you a bit paranoid, there are ways of beating big brother if he was monitoring you with the aid of iSpy. Firstly you could of course shield your Smart phone with your hand whilst you are typing, thus blocking a potential direct line of sight. Failing this (probably because you look a little crazy) you could turn down the lighting settings on your phone or simply disable the visual confirmation bubbles which iSpy uses to read texts. In my opinion, the least inconvenient way to hinder the iSpy peeping Tom is to apply an anti-reflective coating to your Smart phone.
serve two purposes. They sharpen your vision, correcting long or short sightedness or they change the appearance of your eyes turning them into cats eyes, different colours or even smiley faces. Think that’s pretty cool? Then you will love the contact lenses of the future. With a technology called “wearable computing” users will be able to see an overlay of computer generated visual information through the contact lenses. Being reminiscent of the Terminator movies, wearable computing contact lenses may be able to send and receive data from other platforms such as mobile phones, GPS units or gaming units. They could also potentially inform the user of current events and real time notifications plus provide health alerts and even help the user navigate through a city.
successfully managed to create and test a single pixel contact lens on live rabbits eyes. The unit is powered wirelessly encompassing an antenna, radio circuit, transparent sapphire chip and micro light emitting diodes of which all are integrated onto a single contact lens. This single pixel contact lens can be used to perform simple operations. Before we are able to read emails using this technology, hundreds of pixel resolutions need to be incorporated which may be many years away.
computers and tablets of the future may all be powered and cooled with liquid metal allowing processors to become many times more powerful than they are already.
are considered so intuitive and simple to use that they do not even come with hard copy instructions. Virtually anyone can pick up an iPhone and fumble their way through the basic functions. But what about the more complex operations? I know owners of iPhones that testify it took several weeks to discover that rotating the screen can alter the view. This article is designed to highlight some of the other hidden functionalities of the iPhone that you may not have discovered.
a physical prototype of a bendy and flexible phone at this year’s 
like gestures as well as bending and twisting to control the handset. Perhaps some of the coolest features are the electro-tactile feedback which lets you feel images and the mood recognition software which can change the lighting backdrop on the interface when using video calls to represent emotion.
