Special shark senses studied for benefit of Navy

Could technology duplicate the innate ability sharks and stingrays possess to detect electrical fields generated by other creatures in the ocean?

A San Diego technology company and two other firms are trying to find out as part of a U.S. Navy research project that could lead to new ways for the military to detect enemy submarines or mines at sea.

RD Instruments, which develops acoustic sensors for detecting the speed of currents for marine safety, began working on the project in April, said research specialist Jerry Mullison.

Sharks use their ability to detect electric fields created by other animals moving underwater both for navigation and targeting prey, Mullison said.

The firm is studying sharks to gauge the feasibility of duplicating that sensory skill.

“The experiment right now is still very much animal research,” Mullison said. “We are assuming that the sharks are going to be better at it than we ever could be.”

If feasibility studies are successful and the Navy opts to fund RDI, Mullison estimates it could take two years to develop a prototype.

Man charged with stealing Wi-Fi signal

Police in St. Petersburg, Fla., have arrested a man for using someone else’s wireless Internet network in one of the first criminal cases involving this fairly common practice.

Benjamin Smith III, 41, faces a pretrial hearing this month following his April arrest on charges of unauthorized access to a computer network, a third-degree felony.

Police say Smith admitted using the Wi-Fi signal from the home of Richard Dinon, who had noticed Smith sitting in an SUV outside Dinon’s house using a laptop computer.

The practice is so new that the Florida Department of Law Enforcement doesn’t even keep statistics, according to the St. Petersburg Times, which reported Smith’s arrest this week.

Innocuous use of other people’s unsecured Wi-Fi networks is common, though experts say that plenty of illegal use also goes undetected: such as people sneaking on others’ networks to traffic in child pornography, steal credit card information and send death threats.

Yahoo expands mobile search

Internet powerhouse Yahoo Inc., continuing efforts to extend its reach beyond the desktop, is launching new features Thursday to help mobile phone users plumb its online search engine.

One is a text-messaging feature. Users send a message to “92466” — the numerals used to spell Yahoo on a telephone keypad — and get back direct responses to requests about local businesses, weather and stock quotes. Yahoo also promises to deliver a Web link to get more information about the results.

The feature is initially available to Cingular, Sprint and Verizon subscribers.

In another upgrade, Yahoo is introducing technology that will open up its search engine to mobile handsets equipped with wireless application protocol, or WAP. The ability to call up Web sites found through Yahoo’s mobile search previously had been limited unless a handset could read hypertext markup language, or HTML, the format used by Web browsers.