Do you remember the security X-ray screeners in the movie Total Recall, where the passengers filed through a corridor and on the outside… security personnel could see their skeletons as they passed through?

Those are now a reality… sort of.

The TSA has begun deploying security screening devices which can see through a person’s clothing, exposing any metal, explosives, plastics, or ceramics that might be hidden underneath.

Ten US Airports are getting the machines, with a total of 30 screeners planned across the country by the end of 2008.

The controversy, of course, is that in addition to any guns or other contraband, these machines also apparently show off the passenger’s naked body.  The ACLU thinks that’s unacceptable:

“People have no idea how graphic the images are,” Barry Steinhardt, director of the technology and liberty program at the American Civil Liberties Union, told AFP.

Okay, is there anything the ACLU finds acceptable?  Isn’t it their mission to abhor and challenge pretty much everything?

But seriously, they have a point here.  How many of you, by show of hands, want the TSA screeners to see you naked?  Yeah, that’s what I thought.

Oh, but they won’t know who you are:

While it allows the security screeners — looking at the images in a separate room — to clearly see the passenger’s sexual organs as well as other details of their bodies, the passenger’s face is blurred, TSA said in a statement on its website.

Right.  Because they can’t see my face as I’m walking into the machine.  Somehow I don’t see the fact that the faces are blurred making Americans feel better about being so exposed.

The images are also not stored in any way, but are erased once the passenger is cleared through the checkpoint.  So that’s good, at least.

Look, not to be graphic or anything, but I really don’t care if the TSA wants to see me naked.  I’m all for doing whatever it takes to help make the skies safer.  And I’m no Adonis–it’s their loss, really, if they have to put me in one of these things.

But millions of Americans are going to cry foul.

Thankfully, the TSA is saying that travelers have some options:

Lara Uselding, a TSA spokeswoman, added that passengers are not obliged to accept the new machines.  “The passengers can choose between the body imaging and the pat-down,” she told AFP.

Sweet.  So if I don’t want strangers to see me naked I can choose to let strangers put their hands all over me.  Excellent choice.  I believe that’s what’s called a Catch-22.

Anyway, now that the TSA is blogging, you can head over there and leave them some feedback on this new development.

While not yet at the discipleship level of, say, Apple fans, the XP-loving crowd is getting more vocal and organized by the day. 

You see, Microsoft is set to discontinue the 6-year-old OS in June of this year, and it will then no longer be available for purchase (off the shelf or pre-installed on new PCs).  For those not yet ready to embrace Vista, the looming retirement for XP is cause for concern. 

Vista has been plagued by bad reviews, from experts and users.  The biggest complaints are about Vista’s steep hardware requirements (it’s got more bells and whistles, so it needs bigger and faster hardware to run), incompatibility issues with some common software (such as the occasional crash of IE when trying to open an Adobe PDF file), and the annoyingly frequent security warnings. 

For some XP fans, those adjustments are just not worth the switch.  After all, they say, XP has been one of the most reliable and secure operating systems Microsoft has ever produced.  It’s the old “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” argument. 

Of course, once XP goes away, so will a lot of the official Microsoft support for it, such as security patches and system updates–but Microsoft has already said that support and updates will continue for XP through April of 2009. 

The movement’s unofficial leader is Galen Gruman, who started the website SaveXP.com.  The site has an online petition that asks Microsoft to extend the life of XP (something the software giant has already done before).  So far, over 140,000 people have signed the petition.

But Microsoft, so far, has no comment on the issue, except to issue a standard-sounding quote that says they:

“…will continue to be guided by feedback we hear from partners and customers about what makes sense based on their needs.”

The SaveXP folks make a decent point about the majority of Windows users still running XP.  From the article:

Al Gillen, an IDC analyst, estimated that at the end of 2008 nearly 60 percent of consumer PCs and almost 70 percent of business PCs worldwide will still run XP.

Gillen said efforts like Gruman’s grass-roots petition may not influence the software maker, but business customers’ demands should carry more clout.

“You really can’t make 69 percent of your installed base unhappy with you,” he said.

Well, that’s all well and good… but if 69% of PC users are still on XP… then where are their digital signatures on the petition?  69% of Windows users would come out to a number in the tens of millions–140,000 signatures then represents a sad minority. 

So are XP users simply not aware that their favorite operating system is about to become extinct?  Have they not heard about this petition?  Or could it be that they are maybe just… ambivalent?  Unconcerned? 

The current target for the release of Microsoft’s next OS (Vista’s successor) is 2010, so this battle over XP and Vista is likely to end soon enough either way. 

But plenty of XP fans are fired up right now… hoping to keep it around for those next two years until Microsoft can release another–hopefully better-received–OS. 

My two cents?  I recently bought a new Dell laptop, and chose to get one with Vista pre-installed.  So far… no complaints. 

I learned how to turn off the nagging security warnings (and yes, they are annoying… until you turn them off).  I haven’t had any crashes of any programs or files.  Sure, I bought a machine that can handle the hardware requirements (and then some), so maybe I would have more issues with a tinier processor or a lot less RAM.  But I’ve been pleasantly surprised by how much I’ve enjoyed Vista. 

The visual bells and whistles that the added hardware makes possible are quite slick (preview images on task bar mouse-overs, sweet transparency graphic effects, etc.). 

I think Vista was a bit more of a mess when it launched last year, for certain.  But now that we’ve passed the Service Pack 1 landmark, the Windows updates and patches will only make it more secure and more efficient. 

So while I may be in the minority, I’m not ready to call Vista a waste of time.  I would even go so far as to recommend it.  And I loved XP–loved it!  But after six years, and with Vista improving by the day… maybe this is a case of people just not wanting to change. 

I would love to know what some of our readers think… those still using XP and those who have made the switch to Vista.  Please feel free to let us know what you think below.  And if you’re still an XP devotee, then by all means… go let your voice be heard. 

Now Adobe is gunning for even more by releasing Photoshop Express, a free online version of Photoshop. 

Aimed squarely at the core audience for already-established free photo-editing software like Google’s Picasa, Photoshop Express is a web-based application that uses Flash as a platform. 

You create an account and upload your photos.  From there, you have some basic editing tools at your fingertips such as cropping, color adjustment, red-eye reduction, and much more. 

You can also then create a gallery and export your edited pictures to that gallery for all the world to see.  In this way, Express is a lot like Flickr or PhotoBucket or any other photo-sharing website. 

It’s a crowded marketplace, so Adobe has their work cut out for them.  After all, any Windows user can already perform most of the same kinds of basic picture edits using Microsoft Office Picture Manager, which comes with the Microsoft Office suite of programs. 

But Adobe has their brand name going for them.  Everyone knows of Photoshop.  And now, what was once an expensive and complicated software for the elite has a new younger brother that is trim and simple and, best of all, free. 

So I tested it out for you.  I created my account, and uploaded a few photos.  The main photo on this post is one of the results of my edits.  I tried to use as many Photoshop Express features as I could on that picture, but if I’m honest… a lot of them weren’t terribly useful.  The main feature to rave about is the “color pop” control.  You can see that I’ve made everything in the photo black and white except for the jellyfish.  That’s a nice touch, I think, and not something I can do easily with some of the other basic photo-editing suites. 

I did feel like the Flash interface really slowed things down for me.  There’s a lot of wasted time spent waiting around for sections of the site to load, and that was aggravating.  Maybe I just have a slow connection today… but I doubt it.  Flash elements are notorious for slowing down a site’s performance. 

Overall, though… for something that’s free, you can’t beat it.  And since the project is still in beta (testing mode), you can be sure that customer feedback will help fine-tune things quite a bit.  So the end product will likely be even better. 

Check it out yourself here. 

Oh, and here’s the original photo for my example above… almost a shame I chose this picture, because the original is pretty darn good to begin with. 

I must admit, somewhat sheepishly, that I am that lone single-monitor user.   However, I do have a large wide-screen display that has greatly increased my on-screen “real estate.” 

A new study shows that two monitors do much more than just making you look cool… seems they help your productivity as well.  Sweet. In fact, they can help you complete tasks up to 52% faster than your one-monitor peers.  Actually, it’s not the adding of a second screen itself that increases productivity… but, rather, it is the increased size of your on-screen real estate.  So simply buying a bigger monitor would help. 

From the article:

“The study concluded that someone using a larger monitor could save 2.5 hours a day.”

Wow.  That’s a number that could easily justify the added cost of a new or bigger monitor.  Our employees find that the increased productivity comes from having multiple programs open and readily available at the same time.  Your Outlook inbox, for example, open on one screen… with Quickbooks or Internet Explorer open in the other.  Hopping back and forth between the two is beyond simple, and the time you save from not having to minimize and maximize program windows adds up quickly. 

Microsoft also has an excellent “how-to” article on setting up a dual-monitor work station. 

So the bottom line is this:  dual monitors–even just bigger monitors in general–are not just for power users anymore.  More and more companies are seeing employee productivity rise dramatically from the two monitor set up, and the trend is picking up serious steam. 

Obviously, if you are a Keystone customer, we would love to talk to you further about our own dual monitor set ups and help you place an order for the right monitor additions for you and your employees.  Let us know if we can help. 

Okay, maybe not worthless.  But definitely worth less.  Cue the violins.

Blue Ray is now the king.  BlueRay has killed HD DVD dead.  First degree murder.  Blue Ray is the big winner, as Toshiba has announced they will cease production on the HD DVD players.  Toshiba was the major backer of the HD DVD format, with Sony backing Blu Ray.  Over the last couple months, more and more battles went Blu Ray’s way.  Movie studios like Warner Brothers announced they would only produce their films on Blu Ray and retailers like Wal-Mart decided to only carry the Blu Ray format. 

Most consumers had held off buying either, choosing to wait for the dust to settle and a real winner to be declared in the format war before jumping on board the high definition DVD bandwagon.

Now the choice is simple. 

Expect the $5 bin at Wal-Mart to soon be filled with any remaining HD DVD titles they have yet to burn off.  Blu Ray disks, though, will likely continue to be expensive for now. 

From the article:

“We concluded that a swift decision would be best,” Toshiba President Atsutoshi Nishida told reporters at his company’s Tokyo offices. “If we had continued, that would have created problems for consumers, and we simply had no chance to win.”

I can’t claim any insider knowledge on this one.  I haven’t waded out into the high definition DVD waters just yet.  Hey, I’m old enough to remember how Betamax owners felt when VHS won out.  And I definitely had a few friends get burned in the whole Laser Disc fiasco.  So I will forever be a cautious and patient embracer of technology. 

That being said, I’m pretty pumped about this news.  Not that Blue Ray won, but simply that one of the two formats won.  Now, with a clear victor, we the consumers can breathe a bit easier.  Prices will slowly begin to fall for Blu Ray stuff, and the format itself will probably get even better.  And you know Sony has to feel good right now–they were behind the infamously failed Betamax format back in the 1980s. 

Of course, this win by BlueRay will have an impact in the video game console battle as well.  Sony put the BlueRay player in their Playstation 3, while Microsoft went with the HD DVD player in the XBox 360.  Oh well.  Something tells me that Microsoft has enough going for them that they’ll weather the storm.

Of course, in just a short time, most everything is going to go digital.  And we won’t buy our movies in any physical format whatsoever.  We’ll buy them in the form of downloads.  It’s already happening, actually.  While Blu Ray may have scored a victory today, it will sadly be a temporary one.  Soon enough, all formats will lose out to the digital download.  And frankly, I’m alright with that. 

Anyway, go buy your Blu Ray players, people.  It’s safe now. 

Using heart rate, brain scans, facial expressions, body movement, temperature, and other factors, the system would allow bosses to keep an eye on employee productivity and physical well-being.  Just like the Universal Soldiers in that movie…Universal Soldier.  Where the government jerks could see all the vitals of the soldiers (who were basically robots due to their conditioning and super strength and such).  Presumably, your boss won’t take this new system and send you on covert military missions.  But they might be interested in using it to see how much concentration or focus you have, or how much work you’re getting done. 

Getting stressed out during a project?  Yeah, the system would know it, and would alert your boss, and probably even offer some suggestions to you on how you might calm down.  Creepy. 

From the article:

The Information Commissioner, civil liberties groups and privacy lawyers strongly criticised the potential of the system for “taking the idea of monitoring people at work to a new level”. Hugh Tomlinson, QC, an expert on data protection law at Matrix Chambers, told The Times: “This system involves intrusion into every single aspect of the lives of the employees. It raises very serious privacy issues.”

Well, that’s a bit of an understatement.  Look, is it really my boss’s business if I have high blood pressure?  Or if I have indigestion?  I don’t think so.  There are only a handful of professions where this level of scrutiny is warranted (such as pilots or astronauts), but the article indicates that Microsoft intends this product for use in the mainstream work place. 

Yikes.  I’ve certainly worked for some penny-pinching corporations that would love to have this kind of fail-safe in place to ensure employee productivity–but I have a hard time believing that this system wouldn’t be challenged by unions as well as individuals.  I’m all for increasing how much work we get done, but not necessarily at the cost of privacy.  I want my boss to pay for my doctor visits (through insurance)…not to have access to my medical file! This patent filing from Microsoft kind of freaks me out a bit.  I don’t want to be anyone’s Universal Soldier.

So if you’re a Mac fan, today is like Christmas.  Or New Years Eve.  Or some other gift-giving, partying holiday. 

Why?  Because it’s MacWorld day.  What is MacWorld?  I’ll let their website tell you in their own words:

Macworld is the premier source for news, reviews, help and how-to, videos, and podcasts for the Apple market, including the Mac, Mac software, Mac OS X, the iPod and iTunes, and the iPhone. Along with reviews of Mac-compatible hardware such as printers, digital cameras, and displays, Macworld reviews iPod cases, headphones, speakers, and accessories, and iPhone-related products.

So that’s basically a fancy way to say “it’s an annual conference where we historically have announced new products that make all the fanboys go crazy.”  And today’s new product is rumored to be the Mac Book Air, or as some are calling it, the Mac AirBook.

What is the Mac Book Air?  Well, it’s a super-thin notebook computer.  As you can see in the picture, it would be, well, super thin.  So thin and lightweight that you might say it was “lighter than air.” 

That’s the rumor anyway.  The photo we’re showing you is something Wired put on their blog, and purports to be a mock-up of the Mac AirBook.  But there is lots and lots and lots of coverage on the various details of this Mac Book Air rumor.

Now, I’m not really an Apple guy.  I’ve got nothing against them, I just haven’t really ended up as one of the Apple disciples.  But nearly everything they put out looks amazing, and the Mac Airbook is no exception.  I want one, even though it’s just a rumor and might not exist, and I’m pretty sure it’s going to cost darn near $3000. 

Anyway, we’ll keep our eye on the upcoming keynote presentation and come back to update this post with all the juicy info we learn about the Mac-Book AirBook super-thin whatever it is…. so check back. 

UPDATE:  Okay, so it’s real.  The MacBook Air will be available in two weeks.  It’s $1799, and weighs 3 pounds!  It also has no CD drive–hey, that would make the thing too thick to be called Air.  All the Mac fiends I know are going gaga about it.  Gizmodo has a nice hands-on write up, with pictures.  I’m sure we’ll have plenty of news related to this product in the coming days, especially after customers start buying them and reporting in.  We’ll try our best to keep you posted.

Digital downloads of TV shows and movies are going to kill the basic business model for companies like Comcast, Time Warner, Cox, and all the rest.

Let me explain what I mean. Here’s my set up at home: rabbit ears for local channels and major networks, high-speed Internet service for downloading individual episodes of all my favorite cable-channel shows. Now, instead of paying a monthly fee to Comcast for a hundred channels–many of which I do not use–I pay a small, per-download fee to iTunes or Amazon, and only pay for the content I want.

And virtually all television shows are available online now, some for a fee and some for free.

Once broadband Internet access becomes the norm (if it isn’t already), there is no more need for a set-top box from a cable company. Period. It’s over. The future is in a la carte content.

This is why I’m not surprised at all with the move Comcast made into offering telephone service. They spent the last few years building themselves into a player in the internet service provider industry as well. But actual cable television? Soon to die a wretched death, by my estimation.

And now we have new evidence: Comcast has unveiled a new website called FanCast. FanCast is basically a TV guide mashed together with a video site. They have content deals with all but one major network, and are working on deals with major movie studios. They clearly want FanCast to be your one-stop shop for information and downloads. And so far, that’s fine with me. Go here to check out FanCast.

They have a TON of television shows–full episodes–already available, with promises of more. And the TV shows are free. I guess eventually there will be shows as well as movie downloads that will cost money. Again… fine with me. A la carte, baby!

And this is why a lot of people are saying the HD-DVD versus BluRay war is now over before it’s begun. It’s only a matter of time (years…maybe months) before digital downloads a la carte are the norm. There won’t be a need for a physical disc of any kind, nor a physical “player” to put those discs in. Instead of a DVD in a plastic case, my $15 will buy me a digital copy of that film–at much higher quality, mind you. There are so many benefits to doing it this way, it’s not even funny: no more trips to the store for DVDs, storage space eliminated as a need, higher quality film presentation, less equipment to buy, etc.

This is a very good, bold move by Comcast. They are the first of the big Cable firms to step into this arena, and it’s a signal that they know the days of monthly cable subscribers are numbered. They want to grow this new revenue stream so that when regular cable dies (honestly, probably not for several more years) they won’t have a huge dip in their profits. Smart.

It’s almost enough to make people forget Comcast’s recent not-so-positive headlines, such as the FCC probe into possibly shady restrictions on some customer’s web access, or thelocal Nashville blog for Comcast-haters (people fed up with bad customer service). Almost enough.

If you have broadband, go check out FanCast and watch a TV show, and ask yourself… do you really need to pay those monthly cable fees?

The Nano is intended not for heavy drivers, but rather for the masses in India who never had a car, but would use it to shuttle to and from work every day.

In fact, the car would officially top out at 75mph, but anything over 45mph would see the thing deteriorate much more rapidly than intended, because they used cheaper parts. I mean, it’s a $2,500 car, for Pete’s sake… how much wear and tear did you think it could handle? I half expect the thing to be made of aluminum foil.

The car would also fail U.S. emissions tests, so put your checkbook away for now. Heck, it’s likely to fail emissions tests in India when that country adopts tougher standards (as they’re expected to within a few years).

From the article:

“Driving the cost-cutting were Tata’s engineers, who in an earlier project questioned whether their trucks really needed all four brake pads or could make do with three. As they built Tata’s new car, for about half the price of the next-cheapest Indian alternative, their guiding philosophy was: Do we really need that?”

Man, do you really want to buy a car whose manufacturer’s philosophy is “Do we really need that”?! I don’t. I mean, I’m as much in favor of cheaper cars as the next guy, but let’s not forget that “you get what you pay for.” I don’t want my surgeon digging around in my body saying “Does he really need that?” Likewise, I sort of like a lot of the features my car has–such as having all four brake pads–even if it cost me 10 times what the Nano would.

So why am I writing about this mega-cheap car if I think it’s such a bad idea? Well, I think it’s a bad idea for me to buy one. And it’s probably a bad idea for you to buy one too. That doesn’t mean it’s a bad idea in principle. There are a lot of folks in India who can now afford transportation, and that’s a good thing.

Also, this car is expected to revolutionize the auto-manufacturing industry…forcing Big Auto to completely reinvent the way they build cars. Consumers are likely to demand cheaper and cheaper vehicles, and car makers are going to meet that need.

Of course, this comes on the heels of GM’s proclamation that self-driving cars will be on the market within 10 years. So we sort of have conflicting ambitions here in the world of car makers. On one end, they’re working feverishly to develop insanely low-priced economy cars for the masses. On the other end, they’re working on robot cars from science fiction movies (and, I’m just guessing here, but I bet those won’t be cheap).

Personally, I’m holding out for the best of both worlds. I want a robot self-driving car whose manufacture built it on the slogan of “do we really need that?” so that it’s super cheap. It’d be like the most flimsy robot car on the road, probably made of cardboard….but hey…it’s a robot car!!

TransferJet will allow you to transfer files from your digital camera or mp3 player to your computer (and back again) simply by holding the device in close proximity to the PC. Yeah, it’s the Exxon SpeedPass for your tech gadgets. It’s wireless syncing, and it’s going to make gadget nerds everywhere very happy. No more wires, USB cables, memory cards, or docks.

Just wave your mp3 payer in front of your computer and Presto!… your files are transferred. Geeks everywhere can feel even more like a Jedi, with the simple hand wave to command an army of digital files to do your bidding.

It’s apparently a strong and fast enough connection to allow the transfer of HD video files without any hiccup or problem, which means it can totally handle your digital still photographs too. No word yet on when it will be released, but hopefully it’s soon. The future is now!