A Silicon Valley start-up is announcing a new mobile phone mapping service that lets users know when their friends are nearby. The Alto-based Loopt Inc has teamed up with Sprint Nextel’s Boost Mobile LLC to launch its social mapping service. It’s a free service through the end of 2006 and would be charged $2.99 a month thereafter following a 30-day free trial. The Boost Loopt service will alert subscribers whenever their friends are within a range of anything from half a mile to 25 miles using the phone’s in-built GPS satellite technology. This real-time tracking will only occur for those folks who have agreed to be located and have given the user their mobile phone numbers.

New security strategies keep popping up from countries like Britain to counter terrorism, but implementing such strategies without proper security tests can actually turn them against their own people. A security researcher and a reporter in Britain have cracked the newly-introduced RFID passports. Three million such passports have already been issued. The passport incorporates a tiny microchip to store the holder’s details and digital description of their physical features. Though the passport uses 3DES for encryption, which is supposed to be three times more secure to a military-level data-encryption, it uses non-secret information published in the passport to create a ‘secret key.’

With the ability to fly, chase and kill, a robot nicknamed ‘bionic hornet’ that is no bigger than a hornet and is capable of navigating its way down narrow alleyways to target otherwise unreachable enemies (such as rocket launchers) is being developed by Israeli scientists to combat militants. The robot will have super-gloves that give the user controlling the robot the strength of a ‘bionic man,’ and miniature sensors to detect suicide bombers.

The research integrates nanotechnology into Israel’s security set-up, and will find creative solutions to problems the army has been unable to address. The idea is that it is illogical to send a plane worth $100 million against a suicide bomber. Prototypes of the new weapons are expected within three years.

Universal Music has filed a lawsuit against MySpace in the US District Court for the Central District of California, accusing MySpace of complicating the user’s infringement by reformatting the videos for playback once they are uploaded. The problem arises from thousands of videos uploaded by MySpace users.

This has brought two giant groups head-on against each other. MySpace is owned by the News Group, and Universal is a property of the Vivendi group. MySpace condemned the lawsuit and stated that it doesn’t encourage or condone copyright violation in any way. Universal CEO Doug Morris accused YouTube of massive copyright infringement before Google acquired it. Universal, along with Sony BMG and CBS, signed a licencing agreement on the day of the Google-YouTube deal.