Who-Rae debuts GPS anti-theft device

GPS sales have risen more than 700 percent in recent years, according to Who-Rae, an Australian company that develops and manufactures a range of consumer products. With increased popularity and usage comes crime, however--GPS are now the most commonly stolen item from vehicles, the company says. Maplock drives off GPS thieves

Who-Rae is reacting with Maplock, a security device that latches onto a GPS unit and cables it to the steering wheel.

The Melbourne-based company suggests that suction cup marks or empty mounts left on the windshield are signs that criminals look for, so even if a GPS is removed from the car, thieves will cause expensive damage looking for it.
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YouTube tests "featherweight" Web video player

In a nod to efficiency, YouTube recently began testing a more lightweight version of its video player pages called "feather."

Feather pages do a number of things to speed up the video-playing process, from defaulting to the standard quality version (instead of high quality or high-definition), to removing various on-page features such as being able to control the size and coloring of an embed. The idea is to get the video playing as soon as possible with fewer on-page distractions.
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Epson weds portable printer with digital photo frame

Families around the world are sure to take tons of digital snapshots of loved ones for the holiday season, but how to get the photos off the camera? Epson's new PictureMate Show compact photo printer brings images to life with a dual purpose: You can also use it as a digital photo frame.

The Show works as both a digital photo frame and a compact photo printer thanks to its small size and 7-inch WVGA tilt screen that beautifully displays hi-res photos. Transferring pictures to the viewer is made easy using the 270MB of internal memory, but there's also a media card reader and a USB port on the side for downloading images from any digital camera.
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A new artificial larynx for better-sounding speech

A new type of artificial larynx could mean better-sounding speech for those who've had their larynx removed due to laryngeal cancer or other ailments.

Researchers hope the SmartPalate can work for those without a larynx. The space-time graph pictured below the device corresponds to the tongue-palate contact pattern for the word "been".

Researchers at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa, have come up with a system that tracks mouth movements to determine what word is being formed and then uses a speech synthesizer to audibly produce the correct word.

"All of the currently available devices produce such bad sound--it either sounds robotic or has a gruff speaking voice," Megan Russell, a Ph.D. candidate at the university, told Technology Review. "We felt the tech was there for an artificial synthesized voice solution."
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Google, Microsoft join Camera Phone Image Quality Initiative

Google and Microsoft have joined a group devoted to creating a way that cell phone buyers can easily comprehend the quality of their camera phones.

The International Imaging Industry Association said the tech titans signed up to help with the third phase of the Camera Phone Image Quality Initiative, in which a variety of companies try to create measurements to capture various test results.

Mobile phones that can take photos are ubiquitous today, but with tiny image sensors and lenses and severe budget constraints, they vary widely in their ability to take good photos. Mostly all that buyers have to go on is a megapixel count, which isn't terribly meaningful when it comes to such small sensors. The International Imaging Industry Association, a consortium whose mission is to make imaging better for consumers, is trying to come up with a better way.
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