The Sunday Times Innovations

Communication

Tourist guide on phone

Many of us have experienced the hassle of a traveller's map. This is about to change.

A new British company called Guidephone is launching a service that gives commentaries over the phone on London's top attractions.

By next summer the company hopes to cover other popular destinations, such as Bath, Edinburgh and Windsor.

Visitors such as businessmen may be too busy to take a conventional tour. But if they can manage to steal a few minutes between meetings, they can dial a premium-rate number for the information on a nearby attraction.

Users will be able to pause, fast forward or rewind the commentary, which is provided by researchers and art historians.

The initial cost though is high but the company hopes to team up with a telecom company so that the costs could be reduced

Because of the high price the company is aiming at visiting businessmen who are willing to pay a premium. "If we can get the cost down a great deal, we think it will start to appeal to the general tourist," company officials said.

ORANGE a mobile-phone network too has announced trials of a news service it plans to launch next spring. Customers will be able to scroll through headlines and read stories that attract their interest. Sport and weather news will also be available.

At the moment news alerts on all four digital networks in Britain are limited to 160-character pager-style messages that are sent according to the user's profile. By adding user choice, Orange believes it will be able to tailor information more accurately. In the future, customers may also be able to buy rail tickets and flowers.

Space

Ads and tourism for station's upkeep

NASA is considering advertising and tourism as schemes to make the space station pay its way.

After the two space modules were attached NASA is now secretly planning to privatise the station so it could be turned into a commercial venture and possible tourist attraction in the future.

According to Mark Uhran, the manager of Space Station Utilisation at NASA'sWashington headquarters, the agency is holding a six-month study to determine if a commercial station could make a profit, a CNN report said.

"If all goes according to plan, we are looking to set up a non-government organisation (NGO) within a year, to take control of the research in the station," he says.

The NGO would initially have no control of the operation of the station, although within the station's planned life, it could be entirely privatised.

Uhran claims that NASA could go ahead with the plan applying it only to parts of the station. NASA intends to hold a meeting early next year with the station's international partners to hear their views on the plan.

NASA has not ruled out selling advertising space on the outside of the station, Uhran said.

ESA has not yet been consulted over the American commercialisation plans. Robert Veldhuyzen, head of policy at the ESA's Manned Space Flight Directorate, is worried that commercialisation will affect the ISS's role as a centre of science.

"The station is a science resource. It is not there to be exploited commercially for every opportunity. We really don't want to get to the stage where valuable scientific resources are taken up by a guy from PepsiCo going upto ISS just to report back how great it is to drink the stuff in zero gravity," he said.The agency is also trying to work out exactly how much paying passengers to the station would be charged.

"There are several possible schemes to allow paying passengers to buy a shuttle seat and time on the ISS, and we are trying to work out what the market price for such a service would be," says Uhran. Currently each shuttle mission, which carries six astronauts, costs about $400m.

Such plans will infuriate ESA staff who have always stood firm against any suggestion that scientists' slots on the station could be taken up by rich members of the public looking for the ultimate vacation.

ESA can have an astronaut on board for three months of the year and even though its slot will be unaffected, the Nasa plan could compromise European experiments that need tending during the nine-month gap until another ESA scientist is on board.

"It is crazy to suggest you can just take somebody and turn them into an astronaut," claims Veldhuyzen. "It takes an enormous amount of training. I really can't see how the Americans would get any such plans past their ISS partners because we are all dedicated to ensuring the astronauts are up there solely for the advancement of science. It's like a laboratory on Earth. You wouldn't think of sending tourists there, would you?

"The scientists have to work together as an integrated team.

It is absolutely crucial that every member state takes this seriously and only considers sending up people on their scientific merit and their suitability to becoming an astronaut. If other factors, such as money and advertising, become involved it would break down the team effort."

Technology

Language of the net and what it means

ActiveX - a Microsoft technology that in many ways is a rival to Sun's Java system. ActiveX enables small programs to download automatically and run when you visit a web site.

Bookmark - A record of a web address kept by your browser to allow you to return to the site another time.

Browser - The application used to surf the web. The most popular consumer browser today is Microsoft's Internet Explorer. The pioneering Netscape Navigator runs it a close second. Both are free.

Cache - The store of temporary files kept on your hard drive by your browser. It reads from these first, rather than downloading the same material over the phone line, to improve browsing speed.

Cookie - A tiny file placed on your PC by a web site to allow it to recognise your machine when you revisit. You can set up your system to refuse cookies if you wish.

DUN (Dial-up Networking) - The Windows software which dials into the Net and puts you online.

E-mail - Electronic messages sent free over the Net which may include text, video and audio attachments. Your Net subscription should include several free e-mail addresses which can be used by different members of your family. To use e-mail you need to set up the client software to send and receive messages. The most common client today is the free Microsoft Outlook Express.

History - A record of where you have surfed over several days. This can help you track down that elusive site you forgot to bookmark. Like the cache, the history file can be deleted.

Home page - The first page your browser opens to when you go onto the Net. Also the principal page of any web site. HTML - (Hypertext Markup Language) The computer language of the web.

ISDN - (Integrated Services Digital Network) A fast, digital connection which can be used to replace conventional phone lines but at a price premium.

Java - Sun's language for producing web applets.

Modem - The device that connects your PC to a normal phone line.

Newsgroups - (or Usenet) Online bulletin boards which allow users to post messages and questions. They can be a great source of free technical and buying advice.

Portal - A site that is designed to be your starting home page for the Net. These are increasingly sophisticated in flavour and it costs you nothing to try several before deciding on one.

Ratings - A security option in your browser which allows parents to control where children can surf.

Spam - Unwanted junk e-mail. Good mail applications will filter it out altogether.

Terminal adapter - The ISDN equivalent of a modem.

URL - (Uniform Resource Locator) The address of a web site, eg, www.sunday-times.co.uk.

World Wide Web - The graphical collection of sites, accessible through hot links and search engines, viewed through a browser

Internet

Internet Explorer 5.0 goes offline

Beta version of browser offers new ways to speed your surfing even when you're not connected.

If you get on the Net via a dial-up connection, you know how slow surfing can get, and you may get tired of firing up your modem for only a quick peek at a favourite site. The beta of Microsoft's Internet Explorer 5.0 shows great promise in its ability to attack speed problems, making offline browsing and saving Web pages considerably easier.When you see a Web page you like and want to add to Favorites, you're asked if you want to make the page available offline. Click the Customise button, and up pops the Offline Favorite Wizard.

Using the Wizard function, you can set how often Internet Explorer checks the site (daily, weekly, or at other intervals), what it downloads (including images and linked pages), and how it notifies you. You can also modify how many levels into a site you want to go or limit the total size (in megabytes) of the download. This technology will free your phone line and you will be able to read whatever you download, better yet you could schedule automated return visits to the page to see if anything has changed. (If you configure Dial-Up Networking to connect automatically, it will dial your ISP. Dial-Up Networking will not disconnect after the synchronisation; instead it will "time-out" at the time it is configured to do so.)

Developers say they are still working a lot of the bugs out of IE5's offline browsing features.

The synchronisation feature tends to hiccup. This usually generates annoying error messages and only partial Web page downloads. Another feature, designed to notify you when a Favorite site is updated, was far from in sync. (The feature did work after some tinkering.)

Microsoft's slogan may be "Where do you want to go today?" but with IE5 you might think it's "What do you want to save today?" since you got two new ways to save Web pages. Alternatively, you can save any page as an "Archive", converting the entire page's files into a single file. That way you can save the page to a floppy or e-mail the page.

Newsgroup messages can be just as short-lived as Web pages. But using the synchronisation feature in Outlook Express 5.0 (which comes with the full download of the IE5 beta), you can download newsgroup discussion messages for offline reading.

However, Outlook Express lacks the Wizard functions that let you control what and how much of a site you download and you can't schedule downloads.

Science

Nation of sheep or men?

A team of South Korean scientists claim they cloned a human cell.

This step has revived the questions of what exactly a clone is and when human life begins, experts said.

Such issues will have to be addressed urgently, because laboratories have shown they are capable of the technology, said Neal First of the University of Wisconsin. First has created cross-species clones of several animals using eggs from cows.

First said he does not doubt the South Korean team did clone a human cell. The Korean researchers said they took an adult cell from a woman in her 30s, fused the nucleus into another egg cell, and started the egg growing as if it had been fertilized. They stopped the process once the egg had divided into four cells.

No one who has succeeded in cloning cells or even animals would want to clone human beings. The idea is to use cloning technology to grow human "stem cells" that can differentiate into various kinds of tissue for use in treating diseases.

Other researchers are using cloning technology to help infertile women, by using younger women's egg cells to boost aging or damaged ones.

Lori Andrews, a professor at the Chicago-Kent College of law who has become a specialist in the ethics of cloning, said this experiment, combined with recent news that Japanese scientists cloned eight calves, shows it is no longer impossible to clone human beings.

"Between the Japanese cows and the South Korean report, this suggests that efficacy issues no longer apply, it will readily move to the next stage of being able to implant," she said. "And any IVF clinic will be able to do that. I think someone is just going to do it."

"The fact that they went to four cells and they stopped it doesn't tell us how far it would go," First said. "But I think it says the technology that they used is probably capable of doing something."

Opponents of cloning said they would press for immediate legislation to ban such experiments. "We are determined to mount a global effort in opposition to human cloning," said Jeremy Rifkin, a writer on biotechnology issues.

The Kyunghee researchers said they would not press ahead until South Korea's legislators decided on legal and ethical questions surrounding the cloning of humans.

Top US experts in cloning asked Congress earlier this month to allow such trials to go ahead. American laws currently forbid federal funding of experiments involving human embryos. The scientists, including First, say government funding is vital because of the promise stem cells hold for treating diseases ranging from diabetes to Parkinson's.

And experiments continue. First said his team is working to make cross-species clones of monkeys, mice, and other animals using cow eggs.

The photograph shows HE Dr Shaikh Ahmed Bin Saif Al Nehyan, President and Chief Executive of Gulf Air receiving the Award from Head of Customer Services and Acting Head of Inflight Services of Gulf Air, Isa Ali

Gulf Air wins duty free award

Gulf Air has won the 'Gulf Africa duty free merit of distinction award' given by 'Middle East/Africa duty free Magazine' for the fourth time. The airline was named the 'Most Distinctive Inflight Operator' at a reception held at the Heritage Village of the National Museum in Bahrain recently as a part of a two-day symposium organised by the publication at Le Royal Meridien Hotel, says an airline release.

Commenting on the Award, Dr. Shaikh Ahmed bin Saif Al Nahyan, President and Chief Executive of Gulf Air said that it was gratifying that the airline has won the award four times since its establishment five years ago.

"The Award demonstrates the culmination of the dedicated efforts of the Duty Free Division of Gulf Air to enhance the quality of products and services rendered and rise upto the expectations of passengers.

We shall continue our pursuit of excellence and meet the evolving needs of our customers. It is heartening to note that Gulf Air has been honoured with the Award for the fourth time," he said in a statement. Gulf Air was declared the top Infight Duty Operator in a survey conducted by the magazine which included all the carriers of the region.

Nominations for the Award were based on four factors including contributions made to promote duty free in the region, the quality of training and service provided and innovation in marketing and merchandising products. According to the publication, the Award serves as an opportunity to recognise the distinctive contributions to the duty free and tax free industry. "The duty Free Division of Gulf Air constantly assesses the needs of passengers and provides them with an excellent option for purchasing the latest products at competitive prices", Shaikh Ahmed said. "Training constitutes a major activity to update our cabin crew on the products and improve the standard of services. The Award reflects the airline's concern for customer satisfaction on board all our flights," he added.

The award ceremony was attended by more than 500 delegates attending the symposium, senior government officials, top executives of airlines, travel agencies, duty free operators, businessmen and others.

Mindada protects child from cradle up

Sri Lanka Insurance Corporation Limited has pioneered an insurance policy to ensure a quarterly annuity payment from the age of 21 years. This payment would continue for a period of 10 years.

Parents' greatest asset is their children and the "Mindada" insurance policy would enable them to provide some relief to the youth unrest problem. This policy is available for children under 15 years.

Prof J.W. Wickremasinghe, Chairman of the Sri Lanka Insurance Corporation Limited said, that the response upto now to Mindada Policy is tremendous and the policy offers benefits where no other insurance policy has been able to provide, says a company release.

He explained that this policy has three options i.e. an income benefit, pension benefit and an income and a pension benefit.

When the child is 21 years he has an option of converting the income benefit to an enhancing policy in order to collect a pension at the age of 55 years. Further, the child has the option of obtaining 50% as an income benefit and the balance 50% to be converted as a pension benefit.

Furthermore, this policy provides a life cover to the proposer. Mindada policy has a host of benefits such as life cover to the child, an increase of 5% annual payment to the quarterly annuity on a compound interest basis, disability cover due to sickeness or accident, lump sum withdrawal and pension benefit until death.

In the event of an accident or sickness to the proposer the payment of premium by the proposer would cease and all benefits entitled to the child will be provided.

The Sri Lanka Insurance Corporation has paid the highest ever bonus in Asia hitherto and the Mindada policy holders would be entitled for a bonus payment.

It is encouraging to note that we are receiving enquiries from all parts of the country in regard to this new policy.

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