portal

Traveling by airplane these days requires an X-ray scan of your luggage and laptop, but driving in and out of the country by car still requires a manual search. According to CNN, that's about to change. American Science and Engineering has created a device called the Z Portal, which is essentially a mammoth X-ray machine--about the size of an automated car wash--that can scan whole vehicles at a time.

Using a low radiation form of X-rays called backscatter, the Z Portal is able to peer through the vehicle to reveal hidden immigrants, weapons, circus animals, or whatever else someone … Read more

Friday at the Future of Web Apps conference in London, Mahalo CEO Jason Calacanis is set to announce an interesting update to the curated Web directory. The front page will get a ticker, or in modern terms, "live blog," of news items, updated in real time by a dedicated team.

Calacanis told me that the Mahalo home page has been getting some traction as a repeat destination site for visitors, and he wanted to get those, and other, users to stick on the site for longer. He also believes that news is a major driver of Internet traffic. … Read more

According to the Financial Times, music label EMI is planning to launch its own music portal to sell songs and videos, and offer some free content as well.

My first reaction was similar to that of the anonymous music executive quoted in the FT article: dead on arrival. Listeners don't know and don't care about labels; they want to buy all their music in one place, and so on.

But surely EMI's digital team, led by former Googler Douglas Merrill, is smart enough to realize that it can't take on Apple's iTunes with a label-specific … Read more

Soaring cost estimates for protecting US borders against nuclear smuggling arrived at by the Domestic Nuclear Detection Office (DNDO) are unreliable and could result in "significant" overruns, according to a Government Accounting Agency (GAO) report.

How significant? The projected cost to implement the Radiation Portal Monitor Program has gone from $399 million in 2003, when the Customs and Border Protection was in charge of the project, to $1.3 billion when DNDO took over in 2005. In 2007 the cost of equipping US ports with portal monitors was $1.7 billion. It's now $2.1 billion. But … Read more

Verizon Communications said Wednesday that it's extending its agreement with Yahoo to provide Verizon Internet users with Yahoo's Web portal.

The companies' multiyear agreement replaces a similar arrangement the companies had in place since 2005. Verizon didn't offer details about the duration or financial terms of the new deal. But it did say Yahoo's portal will be the first choice offered to subscribers of its DSL and Fios high-speed Internet service. Verizon will also offer its own branded portal and the MSN portal from Microsoft.

The deal between Verizon and Yahoo appears to only cover Verizon'… Read more

The Olympics are a media feeding frenzy, as everyone tries to capitalize on the huge audience for the global sporting event, and now Yahoo is trying to get in the action.

The Internet pioneer said on its Search blog on Tuesday that it's launched a number of shortcuts to present Olympics-related information through Yahoo's search engine. The shortcuts package up information such as the overall medal count, a country's specific medal count, and information for individual athletes.

The customized results present content including video on the search results, blurring the lines between an Internet portal and a … Read more

AOL announced partnerships to bolster its AOL Health site with content from Caring.com, Health.com, and HealthCare.com, the Time Warner subsidiary said Monday.

Caring.com has information about helping care for elderly parents; Health.com is part of Time's Health brand; and HealthCare.com will supply AOL with access to its search facility for medical and dental professionals, AOL said.

AOL shows targeted advertising supplied by AOL's ad business, Platform-A, on its health site, which is part of the company's larger AOL Living site.

"Our goal at AOL Health is to create a comprehensive … Read more

The E3 conference opened Monday in Los Angeles with a press conference from Microsoft. Here are some highlights.

Microsoft showed off first-ever game play footage from the post-apocalyptic title Fallout 3 and announced that there will be downloadable content exclusive to Xbox Live. We saw real-time action from Resident Evil 5, shipping on March 13. We got a peek at the new co-op feature in the game, where players will be able to team up and make their way through together. Developer Square Enix also made announcements that included the release of four titles for Xbox 360 including Final Fantasy XIII.

As for console exclusives, we saw in-game action from Fable 2, shipping in October. Players will be able to seamlessly invite other friends who are also playing the game. Finally, we were blown away by the impressive game demo of Gears of War 2 shipping November 7. The game actually looks better than the original and will feature a five-player online co-op mode.

Microsoft will be releasing a new dashboard interface this fall that incorporates an avatar system--the Xbox answer to Nintendo Mii characters. The new feature allows you to join up with other friends to form a "party," a group of up to eight people where you can share multimedia items or start a game. A new mode called Primetime will actually incorporate real-life TV shows like 1 vs. 100 and allow Xbox Live members to play and watch these game shows and possibly even win real prizes.

Microsoft also announced… Read more

On Wednesday, Cisco Systems issued three patches for critical vulnerabilities affecting Cisco Internetwork Operating System (IOS). The most serious of these affects the Cisco Voice Portal and the Secure Shell server (SSH) implementations.

Cisco says the first patch covers a vulnerability that exists in the Cisco Unified Customer Voice Portal (CVP) , which provides customer voice and video self-service integration. If the vulnerability is exploited, an authenticated user can create, modify, or delete a superuser account. In other words, successful exploitation may result in full control of the system.

The second patch covers the Secure Shell server (SSH) implementation in Cisco … Read more