A student at the University of Electro-Communications demonstrates the use of "Sense-roid" at the annual Virtual Reality Expo in Tokyo - AFP

Japanese inventors have pushed the frontiers of technology with the ultimate companion for lonely singles - a wired torso-shaped device that you can hug and that hugs you back.

The 'Sense-Roid' looks like a tailor's mannequin with silicon skin and is packed with pressure sensors. It is connected to a jacket worn by the human user that replicates the embrace with the help of air compressors.

The illusion of a mutual hug with the half-humanoid is enhanced by artificial muscles and vibrating devices in the 'tactile jacket', say the inventors from the University of Electro-Communications in Tokyo.

"Many people initially feel surprised and uncomfortable about the unusual experience, but they gradually get accustomed to it until they feel comfortable and pleasant," said research team member Nobuhiro Takahashi.

"Usually people feel nothing, or they even feel bad, when they hug strangers, but they experience feelings of satisfaction, love and comfort when they hug a boyfriend or girlfriend," Takahashi said.

"We wondered how humans would feel if they could hug themselves."

He added that the device could be used in medical therapy and to give comfort to elderly people living alone. However, there were no immediate plans to put the gadget into commercial production.

The Sense-Roid is on display at the 3D & Virtual Reality Expo that kicked off in Tokyo on Wednesday.

Did tech-savvy aliens appear above BBC building to grab coverage!

A video that was shot from below the BBC building in London showing ‘white dots’ whizzing across the sky, assumed to be UFOs, has created much excitement all over the UK.

People were left wondering if aliens are getting less camera shy and are embracing the paparazzi, reports the Daily Mail.

A whole crowd gathered to watch as three fast-moving white dots streaked across the London skyline, being quickly followed by two similar sized white dots.

After the five white dots whizzed pass, one larger brighter disc-shaped white object, supposedly the mother UFO was spotted moving around slowly in the sky.

The ‘alien visit’ has attracted different opinions, with one set of people saying that the video could be the work of one of London’s many production houses having the expertise and facilities to mock up a convincing video.

However, the person who circulated the footage on YouTube wrote in order to circumvent the cynical naysayers: “If you believe it's easy photo-shopped why don't you make a video and show us all.”

Police halt Google 'Street View' project in India

Police in the Indian city of Bangalore have ordered Google to stop taking images of the city for its 'Street View' project pending talks with authorities, a company spokesperson said on Tuesday.

Google launched the project in India last month aiming to collect panoramic images of the vast country ranging from its palaces to its slums.

"We received a letter from Bangalore's commissioner of police and are reviewing it. We will not be collecting any more images for Street View until we speak to the police," a Google spokeswoman said.

"We expect to have any issues sorted out soon," she added.

The internet giant launched its 360-degree photographic mapping service amid much fanfare in the technology hub of Bangalore, mounting special cameras on cars and tricycles to collect images.

Street View, which operates in more than 25 countries, has proved hugely popular with users since its launch in the United States in 2007, but it has also run into trouble with several governments concerned about privacy.

In March, France's data privacy regulator imposed a record fine of 100,000 euros ($143,500) on Google for collecting private information while compiling photographs for the project.

Last month the company said it would appeal against a Swiss ruling ordering it to ensure that all people and cars pictured on Street View were unrecognisable.

Google has also agreed to delete private emails and passwords mistakenly picked up from wireless networks in Britain by its Street View cars.

Google now supports five more Indian languages

Internet search engine giant Google on Tuesday announced the expansion of its translation services to include five more Indian languages, Bengali, Gujarati, Kannada, Tamil and Telugu thus increasing its reach to a potential half a million population.

"Beginning today, you can explore the linguistic diversity of the Indian sub-continent with Google translate, which now supports five new experimental alpha languages: Bengali, Gujarati, Kannada, Tamil and Telugu," said Ashish Venugopal, research scientist at Google.

"In India and Bangladesh alone, more than 500 million people speak these five languages. Since 2009, we've launched a total of 11 alpha languages, bringing the current number of languages supported by Google Translate to 63," he wrote in a Google Blog.

Venugopal said one can expect translations for these new alpha languages to be less fluent and include many more untranslated words than some of the more mature languages, like Spanish or Chinese which have much more of the web content that powers its statistical machine translation approach.

"Despite these challenges, we release alpha languages when we believe that they help people better access the multilingual web. If you notice incorrect or missing translations for any of our languages, please correct us; we enjoy learning from our mistakes and your feedback helps us graduate new languages from alpha status," the Google research scientist said.

"Since these languages each have their own unique scripts, we have enabled a transliterated input method for those of you without Indian language keyboards," he said and hoped that the launch of these new alpha languages will help one better understand the Indic (Indo-Aryan languages) web and encourage the publication of new content in Indic languages, taking Google five alpha steps closer to a web without language barriers.

Brit teen behind hacking attacks on CIA, Sony, US Senate website arrested

A 19-year-old British man suspected of masterminding computer hacking attacks on the CIA, the US Senate and Sony from his bedroom, has been arrested.

Ryan Cleary was arrested at his family’s home in Essex after a joint inquiry conducted by Scotland Yard and the FBI, the Daily Mail reports.

He was held hours after the UK’s serious crime unit came under online siege from the hacking group known as LulzSec.

Ryan, described as a loner who ‘lives his life online’, faces the prospect of extradition to the US where he could face 60 years behind bars for allegedly hacking into the CIA and Senate websites.

Ryan’s mother said her son suffers from agoraphobia and attention deficit disorder and had not left his home for four years.

She said he rarely left his bedroom, which consisted of a computer with two monitors, a cooling unit, a broken TV, and a double bed.

Detectives believe he is a ‘major player’ with LulzSec, which has been linked to recent attacks on games firm Sony in which details and passwords of millions of users were accessed.

Man charged with cruelty after 'swallowing rat' on Facebook

A man in the US state of Utah has been charged with animal cruelty after he allegedly ate a live baby rat and posted the video on Facebook, a news report said.

In the video, Andy Ray Harris, 31, from Tooele, Utah, appears to put a tiny, hairless rat in his mouth, before chewing and swallowing it. The video appears to show a small rodent, two to three inches long, lying on top of a notepad.

In fact, Harris picks up the creature, puts it in his mouth, chews and takes a drink through a straw in a giant mug, the 'Daily Mail' reported.

He was charged with the offence in April after police were alerted to the footage online by charity People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA).

PETA's Martin Mersereau said the organisation received complaints from horrified viewers about the video in March.

Authorities say they recognised the man in the video as Harris as he had previously been known to police in relation to other incidents. Harris pleaded not guilty to the charges of aggravated animal abuse during a brief hearing before Judge Robert Adkins.

He made no comment when leaving court. A pre-trial conference has been scheduled for July 19

Smartphone app to help locate friend in crowd

Can a smartphone app enable meaningful, face-to-face conversation? Engineers are trying to figure it out with a software that helps people locate their friends in a crowd - and make new friends sharing similar interests.

For instance, at a business meeting, the software could remind a user of a forgotten acquaintance's name, or help him make new professional contacts in the same area of research.

Dong Xuan, associate professor of computer science and engineering at Ohio State University, said: "Today, online social networking has advanced dramatically, but our ability to meet people face-to-face hasn't gotten any easier."

Called eShadow, the software uses nearby wireless networks and smartphones' wireless communication technologies to alert users that a friend who also uses the software is in the area and gives directions to that friend's location, according to a Ohio statement.

"We want eShadow to close social gaps and connect people in meaningful ways while keeping the technology non-intrusive and protecting privacy," said Xuan, who led the project.

As to users' safety, Xuan feels that, at least for some situations, meeting someone in person is safer than meeting them online.

"Online, people can steal others' identity, or lie easily without detection. It's much harder to pull off a masquerade in person," he said.

The name eShadow comes from the idea that users input their interests into the software, and their smartphone broadcasts those interests to certain other users of the software - but only within 50 yards of the phone. So as users move, the broadcast follows them around like a shadow.

In outdoor tests, they measured how fast the software could detect users who were 20, 30, and 50 yards apart. They tested different numbers of users, from two to seven.

In all cases, the software was able to connect people within about half a minute - an average of 25 seconds for two users, and 35 seconds for seven.

Xuan noted that eShadow's algorithms could be useful beyond socialising. Soldiers could use something akin to eShadow to locate each other on the battlefield.

These findings were presented at the IEEE International Conference on Distributed Computing Systems (ICDCS) Thursday in Minneapolis.

Twitter, Facebook postings can kill dreams of landing your dream job

Getting selected for that dream job has just got tougher, as companies are now scouring Facebook and Twitter accounts to know an applicant’s personal details before hiring.

As Internet search technology grows more sophisticated, surviving a background check is going to get even harder. Employers are now scanning social networking sites like they never did before.

Explicit posts suggesting a person likes racist joke, is fond of too much booze or is a bit too fond of guns, could become grounds for an employer to reject a job applicant.

The Federal Trade Commission has given its approval for Social Intelligence Corp. to sell these reports to employers and the file will last for seven long years.

“You can be deemed a bad apple by association. Are all your friends gay, rich, poor? Do they all live in California or New York or Kansas? What are your hobbies? Do they look expensive or entail high risk?” ABC News quoted Pam Dixon, executive director of the World Privacy Forum as saying.

Dixon also warned that the chance of getting that dream job depends on the would-be employer's predilections.

The employer's decision not to hire a potential employee may be ethically outrageous but its legal.

“It's kind of scary,” says Tena Friery, research director for the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse.

“We know social networking sites can be hacked, that someone can post something under someone else's name. What happens if somebody wants to sabotage a job applicant? And would the potential employee even know it was taking place?”

E-chat lands IIT graduate in trouble

An IIT Kanpur graduate, working as an engineer in a multinational firm in Gurgaon, has knocked the doors of the Delhi High Court seeking protection from his online friend –– a woman research associate with IIT, Mumbai –– who allegedly subjected him to emotional blackmail.

After hearing the plea of Mr Subhash (name changed), Justice Suresh Kait has issued summons to the woman to appear in his court on Monday.

In his plea, Subhash told the court that he befriended the girl on Internet last August and began chatting with her.

The duration of the chat gradually grew longer and often ended late into the night. Mr Subhash said as the friendship grew, she insisted upon meeting him and came over to Delhi.

“After meeting me, she began pressing for marriage despite being at least five to six years older to me,” 25-year-old Mr Subhash said.

Mr Subhash submitted that when he refused to marry her, she began sending him threatening mails and SMSes saying she would commit suicide.

Facebook overtakes Microsoft in UK

Facebook overtook Microsoft websites in Britain for the first time last month, becoming the UK's second-most popular after Google as people aged over 50 flocked to social networks, online measurement body UKOM/Nielsen said.

Facebook attracted a record 26.8 million visitors in Britain in May, up 7 percent year on year, beating the 26.2 million who visited Microsoft's MSN/WindowsLive/Bing sites combined, the organisation said on Monday. Google had 33.9 million.

Twitter's UK audience jumped by a third to 6.1 million, after thousands of users retweeted allegations of celebrity scandals in defiance of gagging orders, including an extra-marital affair by Manchester United soccer star Ryan Giggs.

UKOM/Nielsen said the number of women pensioners visiting the site doubled after "Giggsgate".

"The growth in audiences to these social networks is now primarily being driven by the 50-plus age group. Just a few years ago, this group may have found itself out of place on these sites," UKOM general manager James Smythe said.

He said over-50 year-olds accounted for more new adults visiting Facebook in the last two years than under-50s, resulting in an age profile far more closely reflecting that of the UK online population as a whole than previously.

Older age groups were also more likely to visit Twitter than in the past, but under-18s were less likely to visit the site than two years ago -- which was not the case for Facebook.

Business network LinkedIn, whose market value has risen 58 percent to $6.65 billion since its New York stock market debut last month, registered 3.6 million UK visitors in May, up 57 percent from a year earlier.

Elsewhere, Facebook attracted 140 million visitors in the United States, up 12 percent. In Spain its numbers were up 7 percent, in France 18 percent, in Italy 26 percent and in Germany 72 percent.

Twitter's visitor numbers rose 22 percent in the United States, 48 percent in France, 58 percent in Italy and more than doubled in Spain. But in Germany they fell by 11 percent.

UKOM/Nielsen monitored the online behaviour of about 50,000 people in Britain and similar numbers in the other countries. The panel was recruited both online and offline.

Bamboozled

Bamboozle from Parker Brothers is a delicious union of an instant word builder and Password. This hybrid involves two teams racing to make five words, each starting with random letters. Both teams work on an identical set of letters, and stop their timers the moment they’re done!

Never buy an extravagantly-priced game that requires two AAA size batteries. They’re never in the set when you need them. And don’t even get me started on the likelihood of a star screw driver readily at hand to open the battery compartment! While the LED displays and electronic timers add a certain game-show urgency to the moment, the game works just fine without. There’s a solid two-stage idea at play here. First, two teams scramble to come up with words starting with the same five letters. Second, the teams exchange their word lists, and now have to clue/guess the words.

Aditya brought the game over to Neha’s place. It was an open piece. The scoring pegs missing. The batteries clearly also missing. The man was clueless, and hadn’t bothered to learn how the game worked. If only they’d read the rules, they’d have been charmed with an elegantly simple word game, which promises hours of enjoyable play.

After rattling cubes in the shaker, you tip five cubes into view. The letters facing up are the start letters for the round. Place the shaker in the double timer unit. And start scribbling. There are no extra points for long words. The trick here is to get your words done as quickly as you can. The time you take, is the time the opposition now has, to guess the words on your list. One of the opposition team members clues the other team members. Every word guessed right, moves you ahead on the pegged scoring track!

Bamboozle is a cleverly put together well-finished game, built on a terrific two-staged idea. Understand the game, and you can play it with alphabet flash cards, scrabble counters, or Boggle cubes. Parker Brothers won’t like this. But hybrids are still a little out of reach!

The author may be contacted at arup_kavan@yahoo.com