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In the shimmering fantasy realm of the hit movie "Avatar," a paraplegic Marine leaves his wheelchair behind and finds his feet in a new virtual world thanks to "the link," a sophisticated chamber that connects his brain to a surrogate alien, via computer.

This type of interface is a classic tool in gee-whiz science fiction. But the hard science behind it is even more wow-inducing.

Researchers are already using brain-computer interfaces to aid the disabled, treat diseases like Parkinson's and Alzheimer's, and provide therapy for depression and post-traumatic stress disorder. Work is under way on devices that may eventually let you communicate with friends telepathically, give you superhuman hearing and vision or even let you download data directly into your brain, a la "The Matrix."

Researchers are practically giddy over the prospects. "We don't know what the limits are yet," says Melody Moore Jackson, director of Georgia Tech University's BrainLab.

Adds Emory University neuroscience professor Michael Crutcher, "Anything can happen."

At the root of all this technology is the 3-pound generator we all carry in our head. It produces electricity at the microvolt level. But the signals are strong enough to move robots, wheelchairs and prosthetic limbs -- with the help of an external processor.

Harnessing that power "opens up a whole new paradigm for us as human beings," says neuroscientist Rajesh Rao of the University of Washington.

Brain-computer interfaces (BCI) come in two varieties. Noninvasive techniques use electrodes placed on the scalp to measure electrical activity. Invasive procedures implant electrodes directly into the brain. In both cases, the devices interact with a computer to produce a wide variety of applications, ranging from medical breakthroughs and military-tech advances to futuristic video games and toys.

Much of the research focuses on neuroprosthetics, which offer a way for the brain to compensate for injuries and illness. Jackson helped develop an intelligent wheelchair called the Aware Chair, which can be guided by neural activity.

She is also working on communication programs for people who have been paralyzed by strokes or spinal-cord injuries. Implanted electrodes allow "locked in" patients to spell out messages by manipulating a computer cursor with their thoughts alone.

Rao is tapping into that same concept to help paralyzed people manipulate robots to fetch items or move things around the house. With cameras to provide visual feedback, the patients and robots don't even need to be in the same room, or the same city. Rao says the technology "frees the mind from the constraints of the body."

Cochlear implants are the most common neuroprosthetic. They help the brain interpret sounds and are sometimes called "bionic ears" for the deaf. Other researchers are looking for similar ways to help blind people see. Neurobiologist Ed Boyden of MIT says miniature optical devices can be implanted to convert photoreceptors into workable cameras for the brain.

None of this comes cheap. Most research is funded by deep pockets such as the National Institutes of Health, the defense department and NASA.

But every breakthrough brings the most advanced BCI technologies closer to the mass market. Jackson says she foresees a day when people with disabilities can spend a few hundred dollars instead of $20,000 on a workable system.

Mainstreaming the technology raises some troubling issues for Crutcher, who teaches a course at Emory in neuro-ethics. He fears that expensive eye and ear implants could produce a computer-enhanced elite.

"If only the rich can afford it, it puts everyone else at a disadvantage," says Crutcher, who believes many aspects of BCI are ripe for abuse. Just the idea of mucking about with a person's brain "raises questions about safety and efficacy," he says.

One of the more controversial uses under development is telepathy. It would require at least two people to be implanted with electrodes that send and receive signals back and forth.

DARPA, the Pentagon's technology research division, is currently working on an initiative called "Silent Talk," which would let soldiers on secret missions communicate with their thoughts alone. This stealth component is attractive, but naysayers fear that such soldiers could become manipulated for evil means.

Telepathy implants won't replace Facebook and Twitter anytime soon, but that possibility is problematic as well.

"You can imagine communicating with your friends through the devices, and that opens up a lot of ethical issues," Rao says. Would you want your friends and family to know everything you are thinking? Would little white lies become obsolete?

These questions of morality and liability are not a huge factor for the toy makers and video game developers who are already bringing the most basic BCI technology to consumers.

Games like Mindflex and the Star Wars Force Trainer use headsets with simple electrodes to monitor levels of concentration and relaxation. The signals trigger a fan that can move a ball up or down, depending on how hard you're thinking. Jackson calls it a "fascinating application of a very sophisticated technology in a very cheap package."

The headsets used in both games were designed by the California company Neurosky. Its corporate partners are working on games that help Alzheimer's patients improve memory techniques, teach concentration skills to kids with ADHD and let stressed- out CEOs work on relaxing.

Software entrepreneurs and executives are streaming into Boyden's neuro-ventures class at MIT, looking for ways to capitalize on the array of potential uses for brain-computer interfaces.

Some ventures are already up and running. NeuroVigil in California is working on iBrain, designed, in part, to help provide instant feedback to drivers who start falling asleep at the wheel. Eos Neuroscience is developing light-sensitive protein-based sensors that can treat blindness.

Numerous companies are developing video games based on direct brain-computer interfacing. Neurosky sells a wireless headset that connects to any computer for a series of brain-training games. NeuroBoy lets you set targets on fire just by concentrating on them. Relax, and your character levitates. Another application lets you see a colorful visualization of your brain-wave activity.

Boyden expects to see many more such products hitting shelves sooner rather than later. He says the possibilities are endless if just a "fraction of the business leaders" taking his class start "bringing the technology into the world."

Jackson, of Georgia Tech, agrees: "Nothing is out of the realm of possibility."

Banning, California-- How could a man who allegedly had explosives hidden in his underwear have been allowed to board a plane headed for the United States?

Anti-terrorism experts say it never should have happened, and that specially trained bomb-sniffing dogs could have provided a low-tech way to detect such items.

"The fact that this individual showed up with a one-way ticket, purchased with cash and no checked baggage -- he should have been pulled aside," said security expert Larry Berg, a consultant with Berg Associates. "And at that point, if inspected by a dog, he literally could have been detected."

Umar Farouk AbdulMutallab, the man accused of trying to blow up a U.S. airliner bound for Detroit, Michigan, had a one-way ticket from Accra, Ghana, to Lagos, Nigeria, and a round-trip ticket for his trip from Lagos to the Netherlands and then to Detroit, according to the Nigerian Aviation Authority.

About 700 bomb-sniffing dogs currently work at U.S. airports. They are trained to detect up to a dozen different explosive compounds, including PETN, the compound that AbdulMutallab is alleged to have smuggled aboard Northwest flight 253 to Detroit on December 25.

The dogs used by the Transportation Security Administration are trained at Lackland Air Force Base near San Antonio, Texas. They patrol airport terminals, check unidentified packages and sniff baggage that raise alarms during X-ray screening. The dogs are not currently used specifically to sniff out explosives on people. But they could be, according to trainer Patrick Beltz.

"A well-trained dog and a very good, well-trained handler can find explosives with little or no false alarms," Beltz said. "And if they had been doing it, it might have deterred him from trying to get on the plane in the first place."

Beltz trains explosive-sniffing dogs on a 10-acre ranch near Banning, California. The dogs have been used by law enforcement personnel across the country and overseas.

Beltz and some of the handlers he is training alongside the dogs demonstrated for CNN how the dogs work.

In a series of exercises, a German shepherd named Bear quickly located a variety of explosives planted beneath cars, around a simulated town square, and in an old school bus, which Beltz says makes a good substitute for the interior of an airplane.

Bear and his handler William Yocham work for the Los Angeles Port Authority Police in California.

Since the September 11, 2001, terror attacks against the United States, Bear has been used to search for explosives on cruise ships, baggage and cargo entering and leaving the Los Angeles Harbor. The cost of Bear's training over the years adds up to $60,000.

Beltz does not train most dogs to search people.

"In America, it could be considered very intrusive to make you stand still while my dog went to your groin area and smelled it," Beltz said.

But, Beltz said, the dogs he trains for overseas duty are sometimes trained for personnel searches.

At Auburn University in Alabama, researchers are working on less intrusive ways for dogs to detect explosives carried by people. The school is in the process of patenting a process in which dogs would sample the air left in the wake of travelers passing through an airport terminal.

The Auburn trainers believe their dogs can detect very small traces of explosives and then follow the trail to the person carrying a bomb.

Fran Townsend, a former homeland security adviser to President George W. Bush and a current CNN contributor on national security issues, says the use of dogs in airports should be expanded.

"Dogs tend to be the cheapest, fastest and most reliable explosive detection capacity that we have in this country," Townsend said.

MANILA, Philippines – Online shopping eliminates the hassle of long lines and the mad rush. But online shoppers are not completely spared from trouble as they are prone to the attack of cybercriminals even if they visit a legitimate website.

According to an Internet security software developer, cybercriminals even have new and improved ways to steal confidential information of online shoppers.

That is why Kaspersky Lab, the world’s largest privately-held Internet Security company, gave tips for safe online shopping. The company provides comprehensive protection against all forms of IT threats such as viruses, spyware, hackers and spam.

First, an online shopper must have secure and up-to-date computer software programs installed. Install and keep anti-malware software updated with the latest signatures. This will help protect a user from viruses and data theft Trojans that steal sensitive financial information.

Apply all operating system patches in a timely manner and install updates for all browsers and commonly exploited computer applications such as Adobe's Flash Player and PDF Reader to Java and iTunes. In addition, enable the automatic updates of operating systems and software programs.

An online shopper is recommended to use a dedicated credit card specifically for online shopping. Using a dedicated credit card with a low credit line limits one’s exposure to fraud. Avoid using debit cards that draw money directly from a bank account.

One must also know what he is buying and from whom he is buying the object because fraudsters can set up e-commerce stores under any name to “phish” for credit card information. Locate and note phone numbers and physical addresses of vendors in case there is a problem with a transaction.

If a pop-up chat box asks for credit card details while shopping online, one is advised to ignore it and close out the Web site. Legitimate online sellers never ask for information via chat boxes or e-mails.

It is also suggested to pay attention to the descriptions on items for sale. The word “refurbished” is usually a clue that the item is not in a very good condition. If a price appears too good to be true, it probably is.

An online shopper is also advised to make sure that his transaction is encrypted and his privacy is protected. The browser URL must begin with "https://" and has a closed padlock icon on the right of the address bar or at the bottom of the browser window. It is also worth taking a moment to check the site's privacy policy and understand exactly how information will be stored and used.

Kaspersky Lab also recommended the usage of strong passwords and security features. The company suggested the following tips:

• Get into the habit of using a different password for every online store.
• Write down those passwords and put them in a safe place.
• Use both lowercase and capital letters.
• Use a combination of letters, numbers, and special characters.
• Use passphrases when you can. A passphrase is a sequence of words used in place of a password. It is usually longer, 20 to 30 characters. They can be remembered easier than passwords without being written down, reducing that risk as well. For example: The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog becomes tqbfjotld.
• Don't use passwords that are based on birthdays or pets’ names that can be easily accessed or guessed.
• Don't use words that can be found in any dictionary of any language. These can be cracked with software tools.
• Develop a mnemonic for remembering complex passwords. Alternately, write them down and store them in your wallet.

Lastly, an online shopper is advised to keep a record of purchases and copies of order confirmation pages, so that he can compare them to his bank statements. If the online shopper detects a discrepancy, he is advised to investigate it thoroughly and report it to his financial institution immediately.

NEW YORK - Heavy security -- and a downpour of confetti -- are in place for New York's traditional mass celebration of the New Year on Times Square.

No backpacks or alcohol will be allowed in the square on Thursday, an intersection in the heart of Manhattan famous for its giant electric billboards, tourist attractions and nearby theater district.

As huge crowds watch the famous Times Square crystal ball marking the final countdown to 2010, undercover police officers, surveillance cameras, uniformed teams and radiation and biological detection equipment, will be monitoring them.

"It will be a full fledged deployment of resources," city police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said. "We assume here that New York is the number one terrorist target in America."

Though no specific threats have been announced, the enormous public event, which is widely broadcast live on television, comes days after a Nigerian man allegedly tried to set off an explosion on a Northwest Airlines passenger plane flying to Detroit.

Security is expected to remain discreet, allowing revelers to focus on the traditional descent of the Waterford crystal ball and the ton of confetti raining down -- possibly along with snow flurries.

The ball is a tradition dating back a century and this year the arrangement of crystals will feature a ribbon pattern in a Celtic-style knot illustrating the theme chosen by organizers: "Let there be courage."

A new iPhone application has also been unveiled for the alcohol-free party in which people can make a virtual toast by clinking glasses on their cellphone screens.

While temperatures are expected to be bitter, there'll be plenty of warmth for those joining the city's many New Year's events.

One of the most famous restaurants in New York, the opulent Tavern on the Green in Central Park, is staging its last dinner before bankruptcy on Thursday night. Meanwhile at Madison Square Garden, pop star Mariah Carey is singing the new decade in.

The good news for security is that 2009 is on course to see New York's lowest murder rate since data was collected with 461 homicides, compared to a high of 2,245 in 1990.

MANILA, Philippines - Government volcanologists on Wednesday said only one ash explosion and fewer volcanic earthquakes have been recorded from Mount Mayon in Albay, but the Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology (Phivolcs) kept Alert Level 4 hoisted over the restive volcano.

Phivolcs' Wednesday bulletin issued at 7 a.m. said the ash explosion produced a dirty white ash column that rose 100 meters above the crater summit.

It said lava continued to flow down along the Bonga-Buyuan, Miisi and Lidong gullies. The lava flow has stretched to 5.9 kilometers from the summit along the Bonga-Buyuan gully, the Phivolcs added.

The agency said its equipment recorded only 16 volcanic earthquakes coupled with rumbling sounds and a total of 150 rock fall events were noticed due to the detachment of lava fragment from the volcano's upper slopes.

The Phivolcs said the volcano's sulfur dioxide emission remained high at an average value of 4,397 tons per day.

Alert Level 4 remains hoisted over the volcano, which means hazardous explosion is still imminent.

Nearly 10,000 families remained in at least 30 evacuation centers around Albay. Reports said at least 4 people who have pre-existing health conditions have died in evacuation centers.

MANILA, Philippines - As the holiday season draws to a close, Filipinos now gear up for the upcoming national elections. But as government officials raised the possibility of a power shortage next year, will the 2010 polls be done in the dark?

The government earlier warned of an impending power shortage in the Philippines next year, specifically during the 2010 elections. Citing data, Energy Secretary Angelo Reyes has projected that there would be a 4,100-megawatt shortfall all over the country.

Of the amount, he said Luzon would need bulk or 3,000 MW, while Visayas and Mindanao would require 500 MW and 600 MW, respectively.

As a result, Reyes stressed the need to grant emergency powers to President Arroyo to address this problem.

He also called for a "contingency plan" for the so-called energy crisis, which meant additional funds for the Department of Energy (DOE).

Contingency plan

Last month, state-run National Power Corp. (Napocor) said it will need at least P6 billion to make sure that power supply will be sufficient for next year's elections. Napocor is an attached agency of the DOE.

Napocor President Froilan Tampinco earlier told reporters that they have submitted a contingency plan to the Commission on Elections (Comelec), which includes mobile energy capacities and spare batteries, among others.

"We need to make sure that the electricity we generate is wheeled properly," Tampinco said.

Just last week, however, it was reported that the Comelec will no longer need the contingency plan, saying that voting machines have enough energy reserves to run for 16 hours straight.

In other words, the Comelec is saying that the 2010 polls will run smoothly even with a power failure.

Not just in 2010

The DOE is indeed looking at a 4,100-MW shortage in the Philippines, but not just for 2010. Data from the department itself showed that the shortfall is spread from 2008 to 2017.

Instead of a 3,000-MW shortage in Luzon, the projected shortfall in the area for 2010 is only 150 MW.

A 150 MW shortage will affect only about 833 households, and not the entire Luzon grid, based on the average household consumption of 180 kilowatt per hour in the franchise area of the biggest power retailer, Manila Electric Co.

Meanwhile, there is no expected power shortage in Visayas, while a mere 50-MW shortfall is seen in Mindanao next year, data from the DOE showed.

Further, this is only an anticipated shortage, which means this "might or might not happen," according to an official at the Electric Power Industry Management Bureau (Power Bureau).

A unit within the DOE, the Power Bureau is tasked to formulate plans and programs aimed at ensuring efficient and reliable energy supply.

Should blackouts occur next year, the Power Bureau official said it would most likely happen within the peak months of April and May.

Washington -- The U.S. and Yemen are now looking at fresh targets in Yemen for a potential retaliation strike, two senior U.S. officials told CNN Tuesday, in the aftermath of the botched Christmas Day attack on an airliner that al Qaeda in Yemen claims it organized.

The officials asked not to be not be identified because of the sensitive nature of the information. They both stressed the effort is aimed at being ready with options for the White House if President Obama orders a retaliatory strike. The effort is to see whether targets can be specifically linked to the airliner incident and its planning.

U.S. special operations forces and intelligence agencies, and their Yemeni counterparts, are working to identify potential al Qaeda targets in Yemen, one of the officials said. This is part of a new classified agreement with the Yemeni government that the two countries will work together and that the U.S. will remain publicly silent on its role in providing intelligence and weapons to conduct strikes.

Officially the U.S. has not said it conducted previous airstrikes in Yemen, but officials are privately saying the Yemeni military could not have carried out the strikes on its own.

By all accounts, the agreement would allow the U.S. to fly cruise missiles, fighter jets or unmanned armed drones against targets in Yemen with the consent of that government.

One of the officials said Yemen has not yet consented to the type of special forces helicopter-borne air assault that would put U.S. commandos on the ground with the mission of capturing suspects for further interrogation. That is also a capability the U.S. would like the Yemenis to eventually develop the official said.

At this point, the U.S. believes there may be a few hundred al Qaeda fighters in Yemen centered around a group of key network leaders. U.S. intelligence believes some key leaders were killed in recent airstrikes but is still working to confirm details.

U.S. military and intelligence officials describe to CNN an al Qaeda network with organized command and control that has evolved and grown over the past year. U.S. intelligence concludes there are several training camps similar to those established in other countries where one or two dozen fighters at a time train.

The U.S. and Yemenis are also looking into the possibility the Nigerian suspect in the airliner incident trained at one of the camps.

One of the camps was among the targets in each set of airstrikes earlier this month.

It was a big year for technology: Twitter and Facebook's popularity exploded, while new smartphones, e-readers and a host of other gadgets cropped up to compete for our plugged-in affection.

But into each electronic life a little digital rain must fall.

We polled a handful of the most tech-savvy folks we know for their thoughts on the worst moments in technology from 2009 -- the most epic "fails" of the year.

Your mileage may vary. If you think something doesn't deserve to be here, or think we missed a noteworthy clunker, let us know in the comments section. And now, in no particular order, our 2009 Tech Fails ...

Y2-what? Zune gets off to a bad start

Technically it was a New Year's Eve surprise. But many owners of Microsoft's Zune media player started 2009 with little more than a paperweight with LED lights.

At midnight on December 31, all Zune's 30-GB MP3 players froze up. Microsoft explained the problem as a problem with the way the device's internal clock recognized (or didn't recognize) leap years.

The glitch only lasted a day, but didn't help a device that was already failing to gain ground on Apple's iPod.

TwitterPeek fails to pique interest

The reaction of many in the tech community to the release of the TwitterPeek device was a collective, "Huh?"

Sure, there are some people who don't have smartphones and don't want to pay for expensive mobile plans. But is there really a market for a $199 device that does nothing but let you manage yourTwitter feed?

"I already have a $200 device to update Twitter," said one techie we spoke to. "It's called my iPhone."

The folks at Peek, makers of TwitterPeek, had already made the Pronto -- a device that handled only texts and e-mails. Maybe a combination of the two gadgets is in the works. But even then, would enough people be interested? Probably not.

Facebook backtracks on owning your stuff

OK ... so every time Facebook makes even the most minute changes, it sparks an outcry among its 350 million members, not to mention (irony alert) dozens of new Facebook groups geared at making the site change back.

But a terms-of-service change in February went further, implying that Facebook owned the rights to anything users uploaded to the site. Another change suggested that Facebook held those rights forever, even if people quit the site or took the material down.

Facebook responded that it simply needed those rights to be able to post information to other users. But when the backlash continued, the site eventually switched the terms back to their former wording.

Sidekick punts user info

In what one observer called "an almost incomprehensible data disaster," T-Mobile told users in October that a server error at a Microsoft subsidiary had lost users' personal data it had stored for the devices.

All of it.

Phone numbers, contact lists, calendars and other information was gone -- and even new data would disappear if users turned off or recharged the phone.

Users were offered free service and rebates in the wake of the mess, as T-Mobile scrambled to recover what little of the data it could. But that didn't stop the lawsuits, Internet griping and ill will generated by the snafu.

Hacking Twitter

It started as a story about someone hacking the accounts of several Twitter employees. Then, after Twitter said the attack was limited to personal information, not sensitive, company-related stuff, the hacker behind the attack struck again -- in a different way.

He sent 310 documents to leading technology blog TechCrunch. The blog published a small portion of them and sent the documents to Twitter, which is when the company learned that they included financial projections and notes from high-level executive meetings.

Twitter responded by reportedly closing the security holes that allowed the attack.

Enough with the updates, already!

This was the year that online social media exploded. That's good news for the future of Facebook, Twitter and the like.

But sometimes it just got to be a bit too much.

Members of Congress abandoned any pretense of paying attention to President Obama's State of the Union speech by updating their Twitter feeds as he was speaking.

There was the groom who updated his Facebook relationship status at the altar. And the women who tweeted during childbirth. [In fairness, the most high-profile tweeting new mom was Sara Williams, wife of Twitter CEO Evan Williams].

And that's not even mentioning all those friend requests you got from your grade-school teachers and members of your mom's knitting circle.

Hyped-up Conficker fails

This is a failure we're glad to report.

The Conficker worm was, by all accounts, a serious bit of malware that infected as many as 10 million computers worldwide. Instead of attacking those computers, it was designed to control them, paving the way for later attacks.

When researchers spotted the date April 1 in the worm's coding, speculation began mounting that a major April Fools' Day attack was on its way. Instead, it was mostly quiet -- a false alarm of Y2K proportions.

"I think the joke's on us a little bit, which you would have expected, having an April 1 date," Holly Stewart, threat response manager for IBM's X-Force, a computer security service, said at the time.

Attacks cripple Twitter, Facebook

On August 6, the concept of computer addiction didn't seem so silly.

A massive denial-of-service attack hit Twitter, Facebook and the LiveJournal blogging site. Twitter was by far the hardest hit, completely blacking out for several hours.

The attacks were believed to have targeted a blogger in the country of Georgia who had been critical of Russia. The attacks, the blogger said, coincided with the one-year anniversary of renewed violence between the two countries.

What was telling was how freaked out people became. Users described feeling naked, jittery and upset without the ability to post on Twitter. When the site came back up, the top topic of conversation was the hashtag for "When Twitter Was Down."

Gmail crashes

We heard some different views on this year's string of outages or slowdowns of Google's popular e-mail system.

Some thought coverage was overblown.

But as more computing power moves "into the cloud," people and businesses are relying on programs like Gmail not just for e-mails, but to archive documents, chat with friends or co-workers and store contact information.

Gmail went through several high-profile crashes in 2009, including one in February and two in September. While e-mail crashes are nothing new to any provider, 2009's were the first since Google begain offering offline support.

Response to the crashes simultaneously showed how many people depend on Gmail and how easy it is to make fun of those people. Social-networking blog Mashable responded with a list of five things to do while Gmail is down (No. 1: "Immediately flood Twitter with tweets alternately proclaiming, 'Gmail is down!' and inquiring, 'Is Gmail down?' ")

I got Google Wave -- now what?

OK, so it's a little early in the game to call this one a total fail. But after the breathless anticipation that greeted Google Wave and the hot rush to get an invitation for its beta testing, lots of users found themselves asking, "OK ... now what?"

Google, for its part, released an 80-minute tutorial video -- leading some observers to argue that if you need an hour and 20 minutes to explain what your product does, you might be in trouble.

It's designed as a platform to allow users to communicate and collaborate in real time -- a tool some predict will be used effectively by developers in the future.

But for now, it's inspired the creation of a Web site -- Easier to Understand Than Wave -- on which users compare the online tool to other sometimes obtuse subjects (Both Ozzy Osbourne and the geopolitical climate of Southeast Asia are easier to understand than Wave, users voted, while Sarah Palin and Scientology are both more difficult).

Mozilla won't make a 2009 deadline for releasing Firefox 3.6 and is giving itself more time to complete a major update, version 4.0.

The organization behind the open-source Web browser had predicted a final release of Firefox 3.6 in December 2009, but the Mozilla Web site now includes "ship Firefox 3.6" as a goal for the first quarter of 2010.

In addition, Firefox 4.0, which had been due in 2010, now is "aimed at late 2010 or early 2011," with a beta due in the summer of 2010, according to Mozilla.

Schedule delays are common in the software world, but browser development is furious these days with the arrival of Google's Chrome into the market, Apple helping to expand the frontiers of what the browser can do, Opera trying to dramatically speed up JavaScript execution and display performance, and Microsoft getting more ambitious again with Internet Explorer.

"We've always been more quality-driven than time-driven, but we understand timing in the market matters to our users and our competitiveness," said Mike Shaver, Mozilla's vice president of engineering, in an October interview.

There's a lot on tap for Firefox, though. The big new feature in version 3.6 is incorporation of the Personas plug-in that lets people easily customize the browser's appearance, though behind the scenes there's also been work to speed up the browser's launch time, improve security, and make some other changes.

Mozilla has release five beta versions so far but not the release candidate that signals that work is nearly done; Mozilla programmers are "done with all blockers," bugs or other problems that stand in the way of a release, according to Mozilla's Web site.

So what exactly is coming next for Firefox?

For version 3.7, Mozilla plans several changes. One goal is better performance, for example with a 25 percent reduction in start-up time on Windows. Another is incorporation of Jetpack (now up to version 0.7), an interface for plug-ins that are easier to write, install, and upgrade.

To get quick access to sites that have been bookmarked or previously visited, Firefox already lets people type text into the "awesome bar," formally but hardly ever actually called the smart location bar.

Soon to arrive in test versions of Firefox will be a new ability called tab matching that lets people get access also to Web sites already open in other tabs.

Also in development is the first phase of work called Electrolysis to separate various computing processes into separate compartments for better stability. Firefox 3.7 should benefit from the first phase of Electrolysis, which moves plug-ins to a separate process from the main browser computing process.

That should help isolate problems with Adobe Systems' Flash plug-in, for example, that previously crashed the whole browser. However, the initial work only is for Windows and Linux, not Mac OS X.

Another likely addition will be Weave, a plug-in that synchronizes bookmarks, passwords, plug-ins, and open tabs across different instances of Firefox. Weave integration is scheduled for the first quarter of 2010.

For version 4.0, expect deeper changes in Electrolysis to split each browser tabs into a separate process, too. And version 4.0 should get significant user interface changes.

In earlier planning, Mozilla had expected to mimic some of Chrome's design, with tabs across the top of the browser and a location bar below and a menu bar replaced by some drop-down menu buttons that take up less room.

Now, in a refresh of the Firefox 4.0 look, Mozilla designer Stephen Horlander introduced a new way to replace the menu bar, the Firefox app button.

Mozilla is toying with a variety of Firefox app button options.

In Mozilla's first attempt to replace the menu bar, "we were informed by how Safari and Chrome had handled this problem by paring down all menu items into two separate Page and Tools buttons. This approach has a few advantages but also some disadvantages. The new proposed approach to this problem is an App Button which is similar to the single menu approach taken by Windows 7 native applications (Paint, WordPad) and by MS Office," Horlander said in a blog post.

Houston, Texas -- It takes two people to help dress Cady Coleman for work.

The spacesuit she must wear for training at the Johnson Space Center here weighs more than twice the body weight of the petite astronaut.

"Some people think you might have a custom spacesuit, and you don't," she says. "They're in a generic size."

Pads are added and adjustments are made to ensure a custom, comfortable fit for each astronaut. The suit Coleman is training in is similar to the one she will wear if she must do a spacewalk next year while aboard the international space station.

In November, if everything goes according to plan, Coleman will blast off on a Russian Soyuz rocket for the station, where she will live for the next six months.

Preparing for that trip has been a tricky balancing act for Coleman, who can spend one evening cooking dinner and picking up toys and the next preparing to orbit the Earth at 17,000 mph. Coleman splits her time between Houston, Texas and western Massachusetts, where she lives with her her husband and their 9-year-old son.

On Earth, gravity is not as kind to Coleman as it will be in space. Her spacesuit weighs 300 pounds.

Coleman sits on the floor as two NASA trainers help her wiggle into the bottom half of her spacesuit. Once the pants are on, she is helped onto a platform, which is attached to a crane, where she finishes dressing.

Next Coleman slides up into the top part of the spacesuit. Once her head pops out, Coleman's suit is clasped and locked into place. Then her helmet is placed on her head and Coleman is ready for the crane to lower her into a massive swimming pool.

The pool is known as the Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory, or NBL in NASA-speak. The largest facility of its kind, it is 202 feet long and 102 feet wide and holds 6.2 million gallons of water. The water is such a clear blue that you can see the space station mock-ups sitting on the pool floor.

In the pool, whose underwater conditions can somewhat approximate the feeling of floating in space, Coleman will practice repairs and safety. The training session lasts six hours.

"There's a set of scenarios that we make sure we do so we can fix whatever we think are the most likely things to go wrong on the space station," Coleman says. Although she's wearing an oxygen tank, she jokingly pretends to hold her breath as she's lowered into the pool.

One training drill requires her to play an incapacitated crew member who must be rescued by another astronaut. In the exercise, Coleman must count on Italian astronaut Paolo Nespoli to save her.

Coleman has known Nespoli for years, but Expedition 26 is the first mission on which they will be crewmates.

A European Space Agency Astronaut, Nespoli visited the international space station in 2006. Coleman was at Nespoli's launch to act as a liasion for the families of the crew.

Next year's mission will have an international flavor: The commander is Russian cosmonaut Dmitri Kondratyev.

"I feel very comfortable working with people from different nations, from Europe, from the United States, Japan, from Canada," Kondratyev says.

This year, the three-person crew's training will take them all over the world to learn about each country's module that makes up the space station -- an orbiting collection of research components.

Astronauts train continuously even when they are not assigned to a mission. This is how Coleman met Kondratyev before they were assigned to Expedition 26.

"I knew Dima from robotics [training]," Coleman said. "We spent a lot of time together -- in fact two weeks in Canada together."

The training is more than just learning the technical aspect of the job. Coleman says this is a time when the astronauts develop crucial relationships with their crewmates, trainers and the people who work in mission control.

They have about a year to work on those relationships. As the date closes in, the crew is well aware that the training will intensify and their international travel will increase.

Nespoli says with a laugh, "I am just waiting for this training to finish so I can be in space and relax a little bit."

Romulus, Michigan -- A Nigerian man is "talking a lot" to the FBI, said a senior U.S. official, after what the United States believes was an attempted terrorist attack on an inbound international flight.

The initial impression is that the suspect was acting alone and did not have any formal connections to organized terrorist groups, said the official, who is familiar with the investigation.

The suspect, identified by a U.S. government official as 23-year-old Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, ignited a small explosive device Friday, shortly before a Northwest flight from Amsterdam, Netherlands, landed at Detroit Metro Airport in Michigan.

Passenger Jasper Schuringa told CNN that with the aid of the cabin crew, he helped subdue and isolate Abdulmutallab.

Abdulmutallab was taken into custody and is being treated for second- and third-degree burns on his thighs, according to federal law enforcement and airline security sources.

The sources told CNN that the suspect flew into Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam on a KLM flight from Lagos, Nigeria, and is not believed to be on any "no fly" list, although his name does appear in a U.S. database of people with suspect connections. He did not undergo secondary security screening in Amsterdam, an administration official said.

The administration official said there was no evidence that Abdulmutallab was a hard-core, trained member of al-Qaeda.

The Nigerian national, however, claimed to have extremist ties and said the explosive device "was acquired in Yemen along with instructions as to when it should be used," a federal security bulletin obtained by CNN said.

British counterterrorism police officers were searching houses Saturday in central London in relation to the airline incident, a Metropolitan Police spokeswoman told CNN.

The remains of the device used are being sent to an FBI explosives lab in Quantico, Virginia, for analysis, security sources said.

President Obama, who is spending the holidays in Hawaii, was briefed on the incident during a secure phone call with aides, and instructed in a subsequent discussion with security advisers "that all appropriate measures be taken to increase security for air travel," White House spokesman Bill Burton told CNN. The president made no changes to his schedule, Burton said.

The Department of Homeland Security issued a statement Friday saying that air passengers "may notice additional screening measures put into place to ensure the safety of the traveling public on domestic and international flights."

Passengers described the brief moments of panic on board, as screams erupted and flight attendants ran for fire extinguishers.

Syed Jafry, who was sitting in seat 16G, said the plane was just beginning to descend when passengers heard a pop.

"Everybody got a little bit startled," he said. "After a few seconds or so ... there was ... kind of a flamish light and there was fire" and people around the immediate area began to panic.

Schuringa said he heard a big bang that sounded like a firecracker going off. He told CNN that he was the one who was able to subdue Abdulmutallab. CNN was not able to independently confirm Schuringa's account.

Schuringa said someone started yelling: "Fire! Fire!"

Then there was smoke. That's when Schuringa said he knew something was terribly wrong.

When he noticed that Abdulmutallab was not moving, he grew suspect. He jumped over the passenger next to him and lunged over Abdulmutallab's seat.

Schuringa said he saw that Abdulmutallab had his pants open and he was holding a burning object between his legs.

"I pulled the object from him and tried to extinguish the fire with my hands and threw it away," Schuringa said.

He said he managed to pull an object tucked between the Nigerian's man legs.

"Water! Water," Schuringa screamed. He heard fire extinguishers as he pulled Abdulmutallab out of his seat and dragged him to the front of the plane.

Schuringa said Abdulmutallab seemed dazed. "He was staring into nothing."

Schuringa said he stripped him off Abdulmutallab's clothes to make sure he did not have other explosives on his body. A crew member helped handcuff him.

He said other passengers applauded as he walked back to his own seat.

"My hands are pretty burned. I am fine," he said. "I am shaken up. I am happy to be here."

Jafry said the incident was under control within minutes, crediting the crew and nearby passengers for the rapid response.

Another passenger, Richelle Keepman, told CNN affiliate WDIV-TV that the experience was terrifying.

"I think we all thought we weren't going to land, we weren't going to make it," Keepman said.

One person was taken to the University of Michigan Medical Center in Ann Arbor, hospital spokeswoman Tracy Justice said.

"All passengers have deplaned and, out of an abundance of caution, the plane was moved to a remote area," where the plane and baggage were rescreened, the Transportation Security Administration said in a statement. Passengers were interviewed by law enforcement authorities before being allowed to leave the airport.

No other suspicious materials were found on the plane or in luggage, the law enforcement and airline security sources said. The suspect had only carry-on luggage.

Another passenger on the Northwest flight transferred from the same KLM flight in Amsterdam but officials found no connection between the two, the sources said.

The plane, an Airbus 330, landed shortly before noon ET. It was carrying 278 passengers.

Delta is the parent company of Northwest.

NASA scientists revealed Friday a first-of-its-kind image from space showing reflecting sunlight from a lake on Saturn's largest moon, Titan.

It's the first visual "smoking gun" evidence of liquid on the northern hemisphere of the moon, scientists said, and the first-ever photo from another world showing a "specular reflection" -- which is reflection of light from an extremely smooth surface and in this case, a liquid one.

"This is the first time outside Earth we've seen specular reflection from another liquid from another body," said Ralf Jaumann, a scientist analyzing data from the Cassini unmanned space probe.

Jaumann said he was surprised when he first saw the photos transmitting from Cassini, orbiting Saturn about a billion miles from Earth.

"It was great because if you look at photos of planets, you mostly see nothing is happening. But in two hours we saw a glint of light getting brighter."

Titan's similarities to Earth have attracted NASA's attention for decades. It's the only body besides our own in the solar system that is believed to have liquid on its surface. Like Earth, Titan has an atmosphere which is mostly nitrogen.

Experts believe the presence of liquid on a planet or moon improves the chances that some kind of life could develop there.

The photo comes from the spacecraft Cassini, which has been searching for this kind of reflection since it began circling Saturn in 2004.

Scientists with the University of Arizona were able to use previous data from Cassini to learn details about the reflection's location on Titan.

The glint appears to be coming from the southern edge of a lake called Kraken Mare -- a massive body of methane that covers about 150,000 square miles (400,000 square kilometers). That's larger than the Caspian Sea, which is the largest lake on Earth.

The hunt for the specular reflection took five years, NASA said, because the moon's northern half had been shrouded in winter darkness.

"Next, we want to find out more about Titan's liquid," said Jaumann. "Do we have some kind of weather there? Do we have changes with seasons? Does it rain? How does the liquid methane run across the surface?"

But Jaumann sounded a note of caution regarding the prospect of life in this case.

"The temperature on Titan's surface is something like minus-180 degrees Celsius," he said. "That means it's very cold. But you never know."

The project is based out of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.

This is not the first evidence of liquid on Titan. In 2008, project members used infrared technology to discover a large lake in the moon's southern hemisphere.

But this recent discovery is a sure sign that liquid exists on the moon's northern half. That region is believed to include larger basins that could hold more liquid.

Gary Ribble would not be able to read this story if not for people like you.

Ribble, who has chronic lymphocytic leukemia in addition to severe diabetes and impaired hearing, needed new eyeglasses last spring but couldn't afford them after losing a job he'd held for more than 40 years.

Then he found out about the Modest Needs Foundation. The grass-roots charity pools thousands of small donations to help people get through short-term financial crises. Donors direct their dollars to the requests they want to fund.

"I need these glasses very badly or I will have to stop doing a lot of what I do: reading, writing, and working with my computer; I just can't see that well at all," he wrote in his request.

Eleven visitors to modestneeds.org pitched in, and within a week Ribble, who lives in a trailer in Nappanee, Indiana, received a $364 check that changed his life.

"When I found my message from Modest Needs today that help was on the way, I cried a few tears of happiness knowing that I would be able to see again," he wrote in a thank you note.

Stories like that make Modest Needs Foundation founder and CEO Keith Taylor giddy.

"It is so much fun to read these testimonials," Taylor said. "It's like Christmas every day."

People often don't realize how powerful just 10 or 20 dollars can be, Taylor said. In many cases, a small amount can stop a crisis in its tracks.

"It's wonderful to see what this does for people," Taylor said. "You don't find out until after the fact what kind of an impact these little contributions that people are making; ... you have no idea what kind of a change you really are making in the person's life."

Cady Stanton, a graduate student at Pennsylvania State University, gave $20 to help fund Ribble's request.

"Glasses are such a small thing, right?" she said. "I mean, the man's worked 40-some years and he has cancer. The least he should be able to do is have some glasses. Our social contract with our country -- we should have glasses. I mean, come on. It's not that big of a deal."

Ribble wrote a beautiful thank you note that was passed along to the donors. Stanton keeps a copy of it on her desk.

"Your generosity overwhelms me and I just can't say in words how very happy I am and I thank God that someone cared enough for a disabled man, in a very hardship situation, to help me out to see better," the note read in part.

Taylor founded the site seven years ago out of a similar sense of gratitude.

One evening in 2002 he was marveling at how happy his life was, and remembered a few singular acts of kindness that had helped him get there.

For example, while in graduate school in Tennessee, he incurred a car repair bill that used up his rent money. His boss at his part-time job at a movie theater paid the rent for him -- not a loan, a gift.

As he reflected on his good fortune, Taylor pledged, "When I'm really rich I'm going to start an organization to help the working poor."

That's when his "aha!" moment came.

"It occurred to me all of a sudden that no one who had ever helped me had ever been wealthy, they had just been nice. They'd just had compassion," he said.

Taylor decided to set aside $350 to help one individual per month get through a crisis. He created a crude Web site inviting requests, expecting his effort to remain small, personal and obscure -- "on the millionth page of Google."

But this was the Internet. A well-meaning friend posted a link on the widely read blog Metafilter.com, and the next day Taylor was swamped with 1,100 e-mails. Many were asking for help, some were skeptical of Taylor's motives, and a surprising number of people wanted to contribute, he said.

At first he fended off would-be donors, because his vision for the project was limited, he said. But the e-mails and offers to donate kept coming, along with more requests for help. Taylor soon incorporated Modest Needs as a nonprofit organization.

Modest Needs' first grant saved a woman's life: It paid for a mammogram that found a tumor, Taylor said.

The organization has done nothing but grow ever since. By the end of December, Taylor expects to have made $2.4 million in grants in 2009.

"Every day is another miracle," Taylor said. "It's beyond my imagination."

Here's how it works: People e-mail their requests -- help with rent or a car repair or a medical bill, for example -- to Modest Needs, whose seven-person staff researches and verifies their legitimacy.

The vetted requests are then posted on ModestNeeds.org, where donors can choose which ones they want to help fund. Once the funding level is reached, a check is sent out.

Gift certificates are available. A donor can contribute any amount and then let the gift recipient decide where it should go.

"You're talking about huge, huge numbers of individual people giving just a little bit of what they have to make the lives of people who have short-term emergencies a little bit better by just keeping them on track, keeping them out of the social services system altogether," Taylor said.

Those individual contributions are multiplied by matching grants from larger donors, including musician and recording company executive Herb Alpert and his wife, Lani Hall Alpert.

"We really wanted to help him [Taylor] grow that community of small giving," said Rona Sebastian, president of the Herb Alpert Foundation.

The Alperts were also struck by how many Modest Needs grant recipients -- 68 percent, Taylor said -- turned around and became donors to the organization, Sebastian said.

"That was extremely exciting to us because that was something we found to be very powerful," she said.

Ribble is among those rebound donors: Despite his poverty, he donates $5 a month to help others through Modest Needs.

Washington -- With the coolness of a card shark at the final table of the World Series of Poker, Matt Bergin pulls the hood of his brown sweatshirt over his head and concentrates on the task at hand.

The task: hacking into as many target computers as he can and then defending those computers from attacks by other skilled hackers.

Other skilled hackers like Michael Coppola, 17, a high school senior who, at this very moment, is hunched over a keyboard in his Connecticut home.

Or like Chris Benedict, 21, from the tiny town of Nauvoo, Illinois. Chris is sitting silently nearby, one of 15 "All Star" hackers who have taken over this spacious hotel conference room.

At days end, the moderator of this unusual computer challenge declares the best of the best: Benedict is the winner, king of the hacker hill, followed by Bergin and Coppola.

The trio -- a job seeker, a grape distributor for a vineyard and a student -- are precisely the type of people whom organizers of this event hoped to attract: young techies with perhaps little formal computer education who, nonetheless, could contribute to the defense of the nation's cybernetworks.

In many cases, organizers of the U.S. Cyber Challenge say, hackers' skills go unrecognized or unappreciated by those around them and sometimes even by themselves.

"I thought that I would get demolished," Benedict said. "I didn't think I would get anything at all."

Organizers say the competition is aimed at identifying young people with exceptional computer skills and inspiring them to join the country's woefully understaffed ranks of cybersecurity specialists needed to protect systems used by the military, industry and everyday people.

Hackers may see the U.S. Cyber Challenge, which culminated last Thursday, as a game. But Alan Paller, director of research at the SANS Institute, an information security training institute, says it is really a national talent search.

And one that gives hackers an outlet not usually open to them.

"This is to capture kids that can be very good at this, whose only real option is to do illegal things with it because there's no place to do it in school; there's no place to do it legally," Paller said. "This creates an environment where they can show their skills and advance their skills and do it in the nation's interest rather than for other purposes."

A high-stakes game

Former Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell says the United States "will suffer a major catastrophic event" in the cyber arena if it doesn't boost its ability to protect its computer infrastructure.

A terrorist or extremist group could attack the financial system in New York, destroying data to cause the loss of confidence in banking transactions, McConnell said. They could follow up with an attack on the power grid during a snowstorm. They could cause trains to collide and could release contaminants in the New York subway.

"I believe that [scenario] would have, in order of magnitude, greater economic impact on the globe and the United States than the tragedy of 9/11. All through a cyber attack," McConnell said.

But "if we have the talent ... and we have the organization structure to address this issue, it can be stopped, it can be prevented," he said.

The nation has called upon the technical abilities of young people in the past, McConnell and Paller both note. During the Apollo 17 mission, for example, the average age in Mission Control was 26.

"The cyber vulnerabilities of the nation are of such a magnitude that we need a similar effort today," McConnell said.

Now, other countries are taking the lead on boosting the technical expertise of their citizens.

"In far east China, they've put a concerted effort into finding the best talent and developing the best talent," McConnell said.

The goal of the U.S. Cyber Challenge is to find and develop 10,000 cybersecurity specialists to help the U.S. regain the lead in cyberspace. But McConnell feels that even more is needed. He suggests legislation to create a National Security Act for cybereducation.

Let the contest begin

Like computers themselves, the Cyber Challenge is simple on the outside and complicated on the inside. The first round of the game began in June, and winners of the earlier games were brought to Washington to compete in NetWars.

In its simplest form, NetWars is an online version of Capture the Flag, with competitors vying to penetrate and take control of target computer systems and then protect them from other intruders.

The game begins when a player downloads an image and must find a hidden key within the image. They use that key to enter an online environment and use their knowledge of security vulnerabilities to exploit its system, leaving their name or "handle" in various areas.

A moderator threw a series of computer hurdles and roadblocks to further challenge the hackers and test their knowledge about computer vulnerabilities.

NetWars differs from other Capture the Flag competitions in that it also rewards hackers for defending computers, said Josh Gimer, 22, a graduate student at Colorado Tech. He likens it more to King of the Hill.

"In the beginning days, we were kind of nice to each other," he said. "These later rounds have been more cutthroat.

"But these people know how the attacks work. They know how to defend against them. So it's definitely more difficult than, say, a real-world scenario," Gimer said.

And therein lies the premise and the promise of the U.S. Cyber Challenge, supporters say. "Who best to stop that kind of attack?" McConnell asked.

He calls the Cyber Challenge a good news/bad news story.

"The good news is that [the participants] have that inherent skill. ... I've met many youngsters who are really, really gifted with computers," he said. "The bad news is that we're not developing that talent to the Ph.D. level in things like computer science or electrical engineering, the things that are the foundation of this wonderful technology."

Contest sponsors say they do not fear that they are teaching skills that hackers can abuse.

"They already know how to do that," Paller said. "Our job is to catch them and give them a chance to work for the nation and for the good companies. That's the job of NetWars, to find the very best of them and get them great jobs so that they don't have to use their skills in ways that are unpleasant to the rest of us."

"I think we've done a great job on writing reports about security. Now it's time to get the kids who can actually do it and give them a chance to protect us," he said.

MANILA, Philippines - Businesses in the Philippines are taking a more optimistic and proactive view of IT investments despite the current weak economic condition, according to a recent study conducted by the International Data Corporation.

An EMC-sponsored IDC whitepaper titled “Is Your Company at Risk? Preparing a Strategy for Information Management" showed that in comparison with the global trend which projects a more cautious business overview, Philippine businesses show a more upbeat outlook.

“Businesses in the Philippines see these challenging times as an opportunity to focus their priorities on improving customer service levels and employing technology to deliver value to the bottom line,” says Ronnie Latinazo, Country Manager of EMC Philippines.

“By leveraging and investing in technologies, companies will gain a competitive edge once the economy is on the upswing as they will be ready to manage the surge in customers and better equipped to meet more stringent customer demands.”

The whitepaper, conducted by IDC through a survey of 405 IT executives across India, Malaysia, Singapore, the Philippines and Thailand, also revealed that improving customer service levels continues to be the key challenge amongst businesses in the last six months and over the next two years. Companies place emphasis on customer service as a critical component that could provide enterprises with a competitive advantage and differentiator.

“Technology is no longer meant for such basic operations as streamlining processes or facilitating information management as it has now been elevated to play a critical role in enhancing customer service levels to boost business growth," Latinazo said.

Facing challenges and setting priorities

The common challenges amongst the five Asian countries surveyed over the next two years are enhancing customer service, keeping IT costs in check and expanding into other markets.

Latinazo said companies are under tremendous pressures to achieve higher levels of efficiency with the existing technology they have now because IT budgets are oftentimes reduced or unchanged despite an increase in demand for constant upgrades. He said IT departments are often mandated to do more with less and companies that do implement new technologies must justify the business value and ROI of the IT budget.

While companies see customer service as a key challenge, it is also seen as a competitive advantage and product differentiator. As a result, companies from the five countries indicated that they intend to deploy technology products and services in more innovative and strategic ways.

“Within the Philippines telecoms industry, the challenge is now about which telco can offer the most value-added and creative content in order to expand consumer offerings that provide end-to-end solutions on the go,” Latinazo said.

“As such, telcos require highly available, high performance and secure information infrastructures that are both manageable and efficient.”

He noted that deployment of technology products and services in more strategic and creative ways will also enable enterprises to derive more value from the investment. Companies that make improvements to the robustness of its IT infrastructures will be able to maximize data protection and storage applications as well as consolidate and streamline storage hardware and applications to better optimize its existing information infrastructure.

Public, private spending a top concern

The IDC whitepaper also revealed that minimizing costs, a perennial concern for businesses, is even more important in these challenging times as companies prepare for the economic upturn, and the public sector is no more immune to this than private enterprises.

“In the Philippines, the government is curbing spending by establishing an electronic procurement system which provides more transparency and stricter controls on the purchasing process,” Latinazo said.

The Philippines is one of 10 countries proposed for the piloting of the Electronic Government Procurement (e-GP) program by the World Bank in collaboration with the Asian Development Bank.

“Additionally, electronic procurement strengthens procurement efficiency by facilitating public access to the procurement information, and expediting public services in a cost-effective manner,” he added.

Expanding territory

The challenge of expanding into new markets and gaining new market share from competitors is particularly evident in Philippines’ business process outsourcing (BPO) sector.

Latinazo said the local BPO sector is seen as one of the most aggressive frontiers in technology spending in its bid to attract more foreign direct investments. He said BPO companies are rushing in to merge, set up additional seats, consolidate their information infrastructure to streamline their operations and provide better customer service levels.

This trend is true for both voice and non-voice BPO services, as the country prepares to emerge as the next big BPO service provider after India.

“In order to succeed, BPO firms need the right information infrastructure to ensure that they have a robust and high performing system in place to meet the stringent demands of foreign investors in this space. The Philippines has formidable competitors in other Asian economies all vying for the same piece of the pie,” he said.

MANILA, Philippines - An American was arrested for allegedly kidnapping 2 girls who were supposed to go to church before dawn Tuesday, police said.

The suspect, Mark Odom, was initially accosted by police for beating the red light on Don Chino Roces Avenue in Manila.

Pursuing policemen cornered the American in San Juan City.

During inspection, policemen were surprised to see 2 girls at the passenger seat. Both were crying and claiming they were kidnapped by the American.

One of the girls, a 14-year-old, told police that she and her cousin 13-year-old cousin, "Myla," were going to church to Tayuman in Sampaloc district around 4 a.m. when Odom stopped and offered them Christmas gifts.

The 14-year-old claimed that Odom forced them to drink liqour.

Myla said that while they were inside the car, the American pulled out her penis and showed it to her. She said she tried to resist, but the American allegedly took a knife and told her to calm down or she will be killed.

Odom, meanwhile, denied the girls' allegations.

"They were the ones who were asking for my help. They jumped inside my truck. I think they're doing this to get money out of me. I think they're on drugs, rugby," he said.

MANILA, Philippines - Mayon Volcano's activity has become "very intense" with stronger volcanic earthquakes and continuous lava fountaining, the Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology said Tuesday morning.

"Earthquake signals are more intensive and bigger in size compared to Monday's record," Phivolcs Director Renato Solidum told ANC's News@8.

Solidum said the volcano has been covered by thick clouds since Monday, but the rumbling sounds and stronger earthquake signals indicate that lava fountaining was continuous.

He said the Phivolcs' monitoring team was able to actually see the fountaining of lava during 2 cloud breaks at 6 p.m. Monday.

Phivolcs' bulletin issued at 7 a.m. Tuesday, said the volcano "continued to show an intense level of activity during the past 24 hours." It said a total of 1,266 volcanic earthquakes were detected during the 24-hour observation time.

"Many of these volcanic earthquakes were recorded at maximum deflection and have continuously occurred since 12:21 p.m., 20 December 2009 (Sunday). Harmonic tremors were still continuously being recorded," the Phivolcs bulletin said.

The bulletin added that the volcano's sulfur dioxide emission rate remained "very high," measuring to an average of 6,529 tons per day.

It said red hot lava has continously flowed down along the Bonga-Buyuan, Miisi and Lidong gullies. The lava front has reached about 5 kilometers downslope from the summit along the Bonga-Buyuan gully.

The alert level hoisted over Mayon Volcano was raised from 3 to 4 on Sunday afternoon. Alert Level 4 means "a hazardous explosive eruption is possible within days."

The increased alert level prompted authorities to hasten the evacuation of a total of 9,946 families or 47,285 residents from 45 villages located within the 6-kilometer to 8-kilometer danger zones of Mayon Volcano.

The Provincial Disaster Coordinating Council of Albay reported that a total of 9,428 families have been evacuated from the danger zones.

With majority of the residents evacuated, Solidum said authorities are now more concerned of the ashfall produced by the volcano's intense activity.

"That is the more dangerous part because its very fine ash. During explosions [lava] fragments are quite big, but the main problem of the eruption from a distance is the very fine ash," he said, adding that fine ash produces more hazardous effects to humans.

MANILA, Philippines - The Commission on Elections (Comelec) will decide the fate of the candidacies of former President Joseph Estrada and President Gloria Arroyo after December 28.

The Second Division of the poll body, composed of Commissioners Nicodemo Ferrer, Elias Yusoph and Lucenito Tagle, has set December 28 as the deadline for submission of the memoranda of the parties in the petitions to disqualify Estrada and Arroyo.

The Comelec heard on Tuesday 3 disqualification cases filed against Estrada and 1 disqualification case against Arroyo.

Two separate petitions were filed by Ely Pamatong and Mary Lou Estrada. Both of them were among the presidential aspirants excluded by the Comelec from its final list of presidential candidates. The other disqualification case was filed by lawyer Evillio Pormento.

Estrada’s candidacy has been questioned because of a provision in the 1987 Constitution that bars the president from seeking re-election. His camp, however, claims that the rule applies only to an incumbent president.

Estrada told reporters that he is optimistic that he would not be disqualified “We have a very strong case. Our lawyers are well-respected and are legal luminaries. They are very much qualified.”

Estrada was accompanied by former Senator Ernesto Maceda and lawyer Amado Valdez. Asked who would take his place in case he is disqualified, Estrada said: “I am not thinking about that.”

Disqualify Arroyo

Meanwhile, the Comelec also heard the disqualification case filed against President Arroyo by Pamatong. Pamatong said Arroyo’s entry in the congressional race violates the Constitutional provision prohibiting the president from running for any re-election.

Romulo Macalintal, lawyer of President Arroyo, said that they are optimistic that the case will be dismissed. He said that there is no legal impediment to Arroyo’s decision to join the congressional race for the second district of Pampanga because the constitutional provision refers only re-election for the same position.

“We are expecting the Comelec to dismiss the petition without any arguments,” Macalintal told reporters. “We believe that this type of complaint should not clog the dockets of the Comelec because there are many other quality cases.”

Sometimes terrible movies -- the ones with such bad acting, dumb dialogue and cheesy special effects that they're unintentionally hilarious -- are the ones we remember the most.

No genre is immune, but movies about technology -- ominous Web sites, evil hackers and so on -- seem to fail more often than not. Maybe that's because it's hard to dramatize someone sitting at a computer. Maybe it's because Hollywood doesn't understand tech.

So that got us thinking about the worst tech movies ever made. Not science fiction movies, with their planet-killing asteroids, journeys to the Earth's center, and homicidal dinosaurs, but movies about the digital world. Movies with technology that, even by Hollywood standards, is ridiculous.

For help, we enlisted some people who either know about movies or technology or both: Steven James Snyder, a film critic for Time magazine's Techland; Matt Atchity, the editor-in-chief of Rotten Tomatoes, the movie site; and Sidney Perkowitz, a physicist at Emory University and the author of "Hollywood Science: Movies, Science and the end of the World."

"There are good movies that have bad tech in them," Atchity says. "And then there are bad movies with bad tech."

Read Steven Snyder's list of the best sci-fi movies of the decade

Bad movies, bad tech -- here's our list, which is by no means comprehensive or definitive. You probably have strong opinions about what movies should and shouldn't be on this list. So, post your comments below and we just may include them in a future story.

Antitrust (2001)

Ryan Phillippe is a computer whiz kid who's hired by NURV, a software company led by a guy named Gary Winston (played by Tim Robbins). Winston has ambitions of constructing a giant communications system which will transform the world.

Winston -- a character who appears to be based on Microsoft's Bill Gates -- turns out to be a ruthless man who'll "stop at nothing" to launch his project.

Milo learns the meaning behind the movie's tag line: "A good idea can get you millions. A great idea can get you killed."

Despite the argument it makes about open source software, what earns the movie a spot on the list is the absurdist ends it takes the stereotype of the evil, massive tech corporation bent on destroying anyone in its path.

My favorite line in the movie, to quote Winston: "This business is binary. You're a one or a zero -- alive or dead."

Feardotcom (2002)

Four people in New York City die within 48 hours of visiting a Web site where a sadistic doctor, played by Stephen Rea, tortures women before killing them.

All four die of what they fear most: One dies in a car wreck, another is swarmed by insects and so on.

Detective Mike Reilly (Stephen Dorff) and researcher Terry Holt (Natascha McElhone) are charged with tracking down the killer.

"Promise me one thing, that you won't visit the site," Terry asks of Mike. We all know he will. And if the subtext of the dangers of Web voyeurism weren't blatant enough, all four victims are shown bleeding from the eyes.

"What could have been a pointed little chiller about the frightening seductiveness of new technology loses faith in its own viability and succumbs to joyless special-effects excess," wrote Lisa Schwarzbaum of Entertainment Weekly.

The most absurd part of the whole movie? You'd think the movie's Web site would be fear.com. Nope. It's actually feardotcom.com.

Hackers (1995)

The movie has become something of a cult classic since its release more than a decade ago.

Angelina Jolie is "Acid Burn" and Jonny Lee Miller is "Zero Cool" and they're both hackers. They and their friends come across an evil hacker, "The Plague" (played by Fisher Stevens), who is skimming money off a faceless, multinational corporation.

He frames the kids, the kids fight back.

"There's one decent thing about 'Hackers' and that's Angelina Jolie," Athchity says. "The rest of the movie is a nightmare."

Independence Day (1996)

Sure, this summer blockbuster starring Will Smith is pure popcorn fun. It's the ending that leaves some people scratching their head.

An alien race invades Earth and methodically begins destroying the planet. The end seems imminent until Jeff Goldblum writes a computer virus that damages the alien ships and saves the day.

So, let's get this straight: An alien species whose technology seems centuries ahead of humankind, with ships whose shields render nuclear missiles ineffective, are vulnerable to a computer virus?

"And you're telling me this guy can suddenly decipher the programming minutiae of a completely alien life form that's got an alien language?" Atchity says.

Of course, says one of my co-workers. "It's Jeff Goldblum, he's a genius."

Johnny Mnemonic (1995)

It's 2021 and Keanu Reeves is a data courier. He carries the information -- 80G, enough to fill a few iPods -- in his head.

On his last job before retirement, he agrees to transport some vital information from Beijing to Newark. The twist? The amount of data in this upload is too much for his head and he must download it before he dies.

And, of course, the bad guys want the information too.

"Keanu Reeves has too much information [in his brain]?" wonders Atchity. "That can't be possible."

The movie also stars Henry Rollins, Ice-T, a dolphin ... and Dolph Lundgren as a born-again hit man who's obsessed with Jesus.

"It is a disaster in every way," wrote Caryn James in The New York Times' review.

But honestly, I enjoyed this movie when I saw in the theater years ago. And I still can't stop grinning about it.

The Lawnmower Man (1992)

Based on a short story by Stephen King, this is one of the first movies about virtual reality.

The plot revolves around Jobe Smith, played by Jeff Fahey, who is an innocent, mentally challenged gardener.

A scientist (Pierce Brosnan) experiments on Jobe with intelligence-enhancing drugs and virtual reality to increase his mental ability. It works, until it all goes wrong.

"It's a legendarily bad film," Atchity says. "It was based on a Stephen King story, but the only thing it has in common is the title."

Oh, and, there's a sequel.

The Net (1995)

Sandra Bullock is Angela Bennett, a computer expert who debugs software, orders pizza online and vacations with her laptop. She's sent a floppy disk -- remember those? -- with a program to examine and before you know it, she's unwittingly exposed to a grand criminal conspiracy.

The bad guys, who want the disk back and who can apparently do anything they want (like causing a plane crash), erase her identity and make her a fugitive.

"The absolute worst film ever about the Internet is the one whose brain trust couldn't come up with a better title than 'The Net,' " wrote Christopher Null in PC World Magazine last year.

Atchity sees the movie as a cautionary tale of sorts.

"If you don't want your parents or grandparents on the Web, have them watch this movie and they'll be terrified," he says.

Swordfish (2001)

John Travolta is a crook who wants to get his mitts on $9.5 billion locked away in a DEA account. He brings in Hugh Jackman, an expert hacker down on his luck, to break in to the government's computer.

The more entertaining scenes of the movie involve Jackman trying to figure out how to hack some computer or another.

"I think a lot of people would argue that watching someone sitting around programming a computer is really boring," Atchity said. But, Jackman is "drinking wine, and acting like he's in some kind of concert or something."

"This beat-the-clock set piece, tricked out with dazzling computerized bells and whistles, is one of the movie's desperate attempts to transform the tedious task of computer hacking into a sexy activity," the New York Times' Stephen Holden wrote at the time.

"[Jackman] stirs up further excitement by dancing around like a mad cowboy to conjure up his brainstorms. Who knew that typing could be so intense?

Weird Science (1985)

It's difficult to put "Weird Science" on this list. After all, it's a 1980s film directed by John Hughes, which has a certain cachet. It has Bill Paxton as obnoxious older brother Chet. And I even watched the TV show based on the movie when it was on years ago.

But, really, two teen-aged boys using a computer to create the ideal babe?

"Maybe computers still seemed somewhat magical back in 1985," Perkowitz says. "[It's] the only way to explain how two dateless teen-aged boys, desperately trying to program a computer simulation of a woman, end up with Lisa, a living, breathing and totally beautiful creation with supernatural powers."

OK, so "Weird Science" isn't that bad. Maybe we're simply being bitter that none of us ever managed to use our computer skills to create Kelly LeBrock.

Copenhagen, Denmark -- U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon said Saturday a "deal has been reached" that could be the framework for a binding global climate change treaty.

"Finally we sealed the deal and it is a real deal. Bringing world leaders to the table paid off," Ban said, according to CNN affiliate TV2 Denmark. "The Copenhagen Accord may not be everything that everyone hoped for but this decision of the conference of parties is a beginning, an essential beginning."

Moon said the non-binding deal called for all countries to limit global temperature rise to below two degrees Celsius.

He said the deal was a step toward creating a legally binding treaty.

"The deal is backed by money and the means to deliver it. Up to $30 billion has been pledged for adaptations and mitigation," Ban said.

Critics of the U.N. Climate Change Conference have said that without specific commitments from the leaders to actually cut carbon emissions it would be difficult to reach any target.

Environmental group Greenpeace released a statement criticizing the deal.

U.S. President Barack Obama praised the deal Friday before leaving the conference in Copenhagen, Denmark.

"For the first time in history, all major economies have come together to accept their responsibility to take action to confront the threat of climate change," Obama told reporters.

The president said he met with leaders from India, China, Brazil and South Africa, and "that's where we agreed ... to set a mitigation target to limit warming to no more than 2 degrees Celsius."

It's a nonbinding goal, and the emissions targets "will not be by themselves sufficient to get to where we need to get by 2050," Obama said. However, he added that it is a first step, and that for many countries "this is going to be the first time in which even voluntary they offered up mitigation targets."

"I think that it was important to essentially get that shift in orientation moving," Obama said.

The president said he believes it's necessary that the countries get to a legally binding treaty, but said, "If we just waited for that, we would not make any progress."

The deal calls on nations to submit their "concrete commitments" into an appendix attached to the agreement to specifically lay out each country's intentions for climate change, Obama said. Those commitments will be subjected to an international "consultation and analysis" that will help foster accountability among the nations.

"It will not be legally binding, but what it will do is allow for each country to show to the world what they're doing," Obama said, "and there will be a sense on the part of each country that we're in this together, and we'll know who is meeting and who is not meeting, the mutual obligations that have been set forth."

Another senior administration official had said the precise details of the agreement were still in some flux, so it was unclear whether the final version would include language that was in earlier drafts aimed at forcing nations to set legally binding targets for reducing emissions.

The president worked behind the scenes on getting a vote among key nations -- including China and India -- to approve the agreement before taking it to the wider group for a vote, according to the official.