科技新聞

第二季

2004/04/06

WASHINGTON (AP) -- With just a flicker of blue light, little Johnny's mother one day may know for sure whether her son washed his hands before dinner.

New light-scanning technology borrowed from the slaughterhouse promises to help hospital workers, restaurant employees -- one day, even kids -- make sure that hand washing zaps some germs that can carry deadly illnesses.

A device the size of an electric hand dryer detects fecal contamination and pinpoints on a digital display where on a person's hands more scrubbing is needed.

eMerge Interactive Inc., a struggling technology company in Sebastian, Florida, is hoping to tweak light scanners it already sells to beef plants to detect the same kinds of nasty germs on humans.

The blue-light scanners could dramatically improve hygiene among employees who forget to wash their hands after bathroom breaks. This practice is a leading cause of food poisoning that afflicts tens of millions of Americans every year.

Studies show people typically fail to scrub around fingernails and between fingers adequately. The government recommends people wash their hands for at least 20 seconds; researchers find many people do not even use soap.

"People are not good at handwashing," said Janet Anderson, a nutritionist at Utah State University. "We find that unless sinks are very close to where people are handling food, they don't wash their hands well."

eMerge, which demonstrated an early prototype for The Associated Press, said its first clean-hand scanners could go on sale as early as year's end to restaurants, nursing homes, hospitals and day-care centers. Using identification cards, the devices can even record which employees scrubbed acceptably and which ones still have dirty hands.

"Being able to tell whether there's fecal matter is a major improvement," said Jim Mann, executive director of The Handwashing Leadership Forum, a group in Illinois that studies food-borne outbreaks.

Mann called the scanning technology promising but "not a silver bullet" because it cannot detect pathogens such as salmonella or viruses that do not always spread initially in fecal contamination. Salmonella can be present in raw eggs, for example.

Using a specific light wavelength, the scanners cause a fluorescence in even minuscule amounts of fecal contamination that could carry dangerous bacteria like E. coli; it shows up on a built-in display as a bright red spot on a person's dirty hand.

"Nobody wants to have doo-doo on their burger," said Jacob Petrich, a biophysical chemist at Iowa State University who invented the meat-scanning technology with two scientists, Thomas A. Casey and Mark A. Rasmussen, at the Agriculture Department.

Experts say the high-speed beef scanners work faster -- examining 500 beef carcasses every hour -- and more accurately than government inspectors visually looking for contamination on meat in packing plants. Excel Corp., a leading processor, is installing the scanners in all its plants across North America.

In meat plants, the scanners look for evidence of chlorophyl, the green pigments found in plants and grasses common to cow diets. The clean-hands scanners will need to search for other signatures, not just chlorophyl, that might signal contamination by meat eaters: Human diets are much more diverse than cattle's.

People on the popular Atkins diet, for example, would have almost no chlorophyl in their systems, said eMerge's executive vice president, Richard Stroman. He declined to say which new markers the company is investigating, calling that a trade secret.

"If you only eat beer and cheese pizza, what kind of signatures are you going to get," asked Petrich, who suggested that hospitals or restaurants could ask employees to swallow chlorophyl tablets. "This is do-able, it's just a question of technology, of how you look at the spectral signatures of diets."

eMerge sells the beef scanners under an exclusive license with Petrich and the other inventors, who won a federal patent in June 1999. The company has lost nearly $200 million since it started operations.

2004/04/08

AP) -- White-collar copycats may be less inclined to pilfer the well-chosen words of others now that software designed to ferret out plagiarism is moving out of academia and into the business world.

For years, educators at colleges and universities have marshaled software tools to ensure that their students' work is original.

Now, tainted by scandals or leery of the Internet's copy-enabling power, a growing number of newspapers, law firms and other businesses are using data-sifting tools that can cross-check billions of digital documents and swiftly recognize patterns in just seconds.

Unlike Google and other search engines that find matches to typed-in key words, an advanced plagiarism-detection service such as iParadigms LLC's makes a digital fingerprint of an entire document and compares it against material on the Internet and in other sources, including proprietary academic and media databases.

Even the U.N. Security Council has begun to protect its credibility this way, using iParadigm's technology since last fall to ensure the originality of reports by its researchers and freelance writers.

Oakland, California-based iParadigms started in 1996 with a computer program to help researchers at the University of California, Berkeley inspect undergraduates' papers. Today, its Turnitin plagiarism-detector is used by about 2,500 high schools and colleges in the United States and 1,000 more abroad. It launched a commercial version, iThenticate, in January.

Other plagiarism-detection providers, including Glatt Plagiarism Services, MyDropBox LLC, and CFL Software Development also report growing business outside the educational sector.

New clients include companies that produce instruction or training materials, attorneys searching for copyright violations, Web sites and police and military agencies that check officers' applications for promotions.

Few of these businesses are willing to talk about using these tools. Many insist that the software makers shield their identities and keep mum about any transgressions that are exposed.

None of the plagiarism-catchers said their clients were willing to be interviewed for this story. Fearing negative publicity, most "don't want other people to know they're using the service," said Max Litvin, co-owner and inventor of MyDropBox.

Last year, one publisher turned to iParadigms when it investigated -- and subsequently affirmed -- rumors that an accomplished textbook author had plagiarized other sources. Sworn to secrecy, iParadigms president John Barrie said he watched in disbelief as the publisher quietly revised later editions, leaving the author's reputation intact.

"But I see a lot of plagiarism everyday," Barrie said. "Most authors, whether a student or professional author, they think the odds of being found out are so remote that they'll play the odds and think they're just fine."

IParadigms charges universities a $500 annual licensing fee plus 60 cents per full-time student. Business customers pay $1,000 a year and $10 for each page submitted for screening. Newspapers face different charging options based on word count or circulation.

A different program, WCopyfinder, was employed by USA Today as it probed the work of its embattled former reporter Jack Kelley. The free program compares strings of words only from preselected documents.

IThenticate and MyDropBox, by contrast, are Web-based tools. Users upload documents to the Web sites; the services troll the Internet and other proprietary databases, such as Lexis-Nexis or ProQuest, for any sign of unoriginal work; then they produce reports showing matches. IThenticate also combs its archive of Internet pages, which grows by 40 million pages a day.

Clearly, plagiarism is a growing problem. In a survey of 30,000 undergraduates at 34 colleges, 37 percent admitted committing cut-and-paste plagiarism using the Internet, up from 10 percent in 1999. Only 20 percent of their professors use plagiarism-detection tools, according to the survey by Rutgers University professor Don McCabe, founder of the Center for Academic Integrity.

Plagiarism detectors can be relatively cheap insurance against intellectual property sins, but many businesses and even educators remain reluctant to use them. Some fear lawsuits if they accuse someone of cheating. And deciding what amounts to actual plagiarism remains a judgment call that humans must make, creators of the software say.

"It's merely a tool to guide the eye," said Lou Bloomfield, a University of Virginia physics professor who created WCopyfinder in 2001 to check for plagiarism in student term papers.

IParadigms software helped The Hartford Courant conclude last month that Central Connecticut State University's president, Richard Judd, had committed plagiarism in an op-ed piece after an alert reader said it may have lifted sentences from The New York Times.

The Connecticut newspaper tried an Internet keyword search but without much success. IParadigm's software later showed that the opinion piece included not only material from the Times but also three other sources -- at least 11 percent of it appeared to be unoriginal.

The criticism upended the respected university administrator's career -- Judd, 66, announced on March 19 that he will retire July 1.

The Courant doesn't plan to routinely check every story for plagiarism -- just submissions for the editorial page, says John Zakarian, editorial page editor. However, the paper now has a fast and effective tool to use if a staff writer's story is questioned, he says.

"We've come to rely more and more on the Internet," he said, "and it's not humanly possible to verify every sentence and word. I was amazed we have the wonders of technology to help in that fashion."

Other newspapers are reluctant to use the powerful software.

At the Macon Telegraph, which fired a reporter for plagiarism in March, editors are discussing how to prevent a repeat occurrence -- but such electronic tools aren't being considered, said managing editor Mike McQueen.

"We, the editors, trust our writers deeply," he said. "I don't think anybody here would want to challenge our reporters to prove that they are not plagiarizing everything they write. It'll look like a witch hunt."

Still, Barrie predicts that iParadigms' commercial clients will eventually outnumber the academics. "The stakes are 100 times greater," he said. "We're not talking about grades anymore."

2004/04/17

NEW YORK (AP) -- The mind-boggling speed and reach of Internet search engines mask a severe limitation: They are powered by words alone.

What a humdrum existence. The world is so much brighter and more varied, full of objects and patterns that defy searchable descriptions.

In hopes of wrapping their arms around more of that stuff, computing researchers have developed new search engines that can mine catalogs of three-dimensional objects, like airplane parts or architectural features.

All the users have to do is sketch what they're thinking of, and the search engines can produce comparable objects.

"The idea of information and knowledge, and retrieval of knowledge, has been something I've been intrigued with for a long time. This gives it a more solidified meaning," said Karthik Ramani, a Purdue University professor who created a system that can find computer-designed industrial parts.

Ramani expects his search engine will serve huge industrial companies whose engineers often waste time and energy designing a specialized part when someone else has already created, used or rejected something similar.

Rick Jeffs, senior engineering specialist at a Caterpillar Inc. engine center in Lafayette, Indiana, believes Ramani's technology could help the company simplify its inventory. Jeffs' center alone has tens of thousands of different parts.

"If you've got to design a new elbow for an oil line, more often than not, we have a plethora of elbows," Jeffs said. But even though many parts are created with computer-aided design (CAD) software, they are catalogued such that each has to be examined separately, a tedious task "that isn't even performed that often, because it isn't feasible or practical."

With the Purdue search engine, designers could sketch the part they need and instantly see dozens in inventory that might fit the bill.

If an item seems close, but not quite right, designers can see a "skeleton" of the part and manipulate it on their computer screens -- make it longer or shorter or curved, for example -- and then query the database again.

"It seems like there's ever-greater demands for speed in product development, and it's those kinds of breakthroughs that are needed to keep up," Jeffs said. "This would really just add to the efficiency."

Mainstream search engines, meanwhile, are still trying to master 2-D images. For example, Google Inc.'s picture search program delivers pretty good results but can't actually examine the images it serves up. It mines the text surrounding the photos, and hopes for success.

However, 3-D search engines have begun to emerge as improvements in computing power and interactive modeling software have deepened the pool of designs available to query -- not only in industrial settings but also in highly detailed online virtual worlds. Boeing Co. engineers invented their own 3-D search engine a few years ago as part of an effort to reuse more parts.

Princeton University professor Thomas Funkhouser and colleagues have put a 3-D search engine on the Web that lets anyone sketch an object using a computer mouse, add a textual description, then search for similar models in design databases.

The results can be startling. Draw a big potato, and the system responds with a bunch of, well, potato-looking objects -- and a few urns. Those seem wrong until you rotate your potato, orienting it vertically instead of horizontally, and see your sketch actually does resemble an urn, narrow on top and bottom and bulging in the middle.

Certainly this makes old-fashioned keyword searches seem a blunt instrument.

Then again, text can be far more precise than a sketch. If you're searching for information about baseball Hall of Famers, there's little chance a computer will misunderstand a query for "Willie Mays."

So how can computer programs look for objects? The breakthrough is the voxel.

Digital camera owners are familiar with pixels -- the basic element of a digital image. Each pixel is a tiny grain of color.

Similarly, a voxel is the basic element of a three-dimensional object that is represented in a computer. Each voxel represents the volume of the object at any given point.

In Ramani's program, for example, stored CAD designs and entries sketched by users are converted into voxels. Then voxel patterns are compared for similarities. Because the voxels represent volume rather than just shape, the program can sniff out, say, a coffee cup, which is mostly hollow but might have a solid handle.

Princeton's Funkhouser believes 3-D searching should get even smarter. He believes the systems ought to learn from their users' queries and eventually recognize common patterns. A computer could eventually recognize that several different images all show a human, even if the people are in different poses.

For the foreseeable future, 3-D searching is likely to see only specialized business uses. However, Peter Norvig, Google's director of search quality, calls the technology "interesting" and adds, "If it starts to take off, we'll look more seriously at it."

Ramani is still fine-tuning the interface of his 3-D search engine, which is to be licensed by Imaginestics LLC, where he is chief scientist. But he is already excited about the improvements in productivity that could result when objects, not just words, are accessible through computers.

"I think this," he said, "is the beginning of the information age."

2004/05/10

HP to launch custom gaming computer
Hewlett-Packard to offer built-to-order computers designed for video games over Web site.
May 10, 2004: 8:11 AM EDT

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Seeking to take advantage of the fast-growing video game market, Hewlett-Packard Co. said Monday it will begin to offer built-to-order custom personal computers for game enthusiasts.

HP said the Web site allowing users to design their Compaq "X Gaming" machines would go live in June or July and offer a range of options with standard, off-the-shelf components. Retailers will also offer access to the machines through their own custom configuration kiosks.

Prices will start at around $1,599 after promotions, HP executives said, and peak at more than $3,000.

"There's definitely a role for a company like HP in this market," said Tom Markworth, a product marketing manager with HP, in an interview.

The announcement came at the start of E3, the annual video game industry trade show in Los Angeles. Computer hardware makers have placed increasing focus on E3 as a way to demonstrate the capabilities of their most powerful systems.

HP (HPQ: Research, Estimates) has been offering a Compaq gaming machine for a few months, mostly in a standard configuration sold on a limited basis by select retailers.

Those pilot sales, Markworth said, convinced the company that it could compete in a market where well-known specialty manufacturers like Alienware, Voodoo and Falcon Northwest face increasing competition from mainstream players like Dell Inc (DELL: Research, Estimates).

While HP's name is not the first on the mind of gaming enthusiasts today, Markworth said the company's long history will be its advantage as it enters the market.

"Credibility is something you only earn over time," he said. "HP with its Compaq brand has a huge advantage in stepping in as a newer player."

The X Gaming machines will feature a standard chassis from CoolerMaster, known for its work in keeping system noise down while also decreasing heat, and red glowing lights in front and back that will make it stand out in the dark.

"We're able to use our purchasing power as the world's largest consumer PC company ... to be able to procure some of these higher-end components" and pass along cost savings to customers, he said.

Pre-installed software will be kept to a minimum, so as not to clutter the machines. The company plans to aggressively support their rollout.

"We're going to compete hard here," Markworth said

2004/05/11

(CNN) -- NASA's latest experiment with health care may benefit Earth-bound patients as much as astronauts -- and space researchers couldn't be happier.

A trial on the international space station is using ultrasound -- low-frequency sound waves -- to look for injuries inside the body during spaceflight.

The ultrasound probe creates a digital image of the body that is sent electronically to doctors who can diagnose such things as heart problems, collapsed lungs, muscle loss and abdominal conditions.

As NASA looks ahead to a manned mission to Mars and extended sojourns in space, the agency is embracing remote medicine -- also known as telehealth -- to protect its astronauts while meeting increasingly tight budgets.

"We need the most bang for our buck to protect and care for the astronauts," said Victor Snyder, chief of clinical research program at NASA.

Although astronauts are receiving cutting-edge care, the technology promises to have a far greater impact closer to home.

Telehealth technology uses interactive devices, which can be anything from e-mail to satellite teleconferencing, to monitor patients. In the case of ultrasound, the technology allows researchers to expand the reach of diagnostic equipment by linking to ground-based medical facilities.

Snyder has high hopes that this technology will help revolutionize health care the same way the lunar missions did 30 years ago.

Technology developed for the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo moon programs called telemetry, or long-distance monitoring of vital signs, ended up saving lives in intensive care units. The instruments use computers and body sensors to monitor heart rate, respiration and brain activity.

They became common in hospitals across the nation during the 1970s. Those advances helped send intensive care mortality rates plummeting from about 40 percent in the 1960s to only 7 percent a decade later, Snyder said.

The applications on Earth are already beginning.

Researchers recently installed one of the devices in the locker room of the Detroit Red Wings hockey team. The technology also has been used by the U.S. armed forces to diagnose casualties on the front lines of in Iraq.

Dr. Scott Dulchavsky, chairman of surgery at Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit, Michigan, and principal investigator for the NASA initiative, said the experiments can give insights into how the equipment is used in an emergency -- whether it's a Mars mission or a hockey game.

"There are a lot of similarities between the space station and the Red Wings locker room," he said, adding that both places benefit from remote diagnosis when full medical help is unavailable.

That could prove particularly critical to NASA.

Under the exploration initiative announced by the White House in February, NASA expects to establish a lunar base and send a manned mission to Mars in the coming decades. Comprehensive medical care on those missions will be critical.

In preparation, Snyder said, the space agency would devote significant resources to maturing telehealth technology.

"For the Mars mission, [telemedicine] will be a major effort we intend to do," Snyder said. "We need to take telemedicine one step further."

Researchers said the technology has performed admirably so far.

"We have proven that we can turn it on and get the images we need into the hands of an expert," Dulchavsky said.

2004/06/02

(AP) -- To access her bank account online, Marie Jubran opens a Web browser and types in her Swedish national ID number along with a four-digit password.

For additional security, she then pulls out a card that has 50 scratch-off codes. Jubran uses the codes, one by one, each time she logs on or performs a transaction. Her bank, Nordea PLC, automatically sends a new card when she's about to run out.

As more Web sites demand passwords, scammers are getting more clever about stealing them. Hence the need for such "passwords-plus" systems.

Scandinavian countries are among the leaders as many online businesses abandon static passwords in favor of so-called two-factor authentication.

"A password is a construct of the past that has run out of steam," said Joseph Atick, chief executive of Identix Inc., a Minnesota designer of fingerprint-based authentication. "The human mind-set is not used to dealing with so many different passwords and so many different PINs."

When a static password alone is required, security experts recommend that users combine letters and numbers and avoid easy-to-guess passwords like "1234" or a nickname.

Stevan Hoffacker follows those rules but commits a different faux pas: He uses the same password everywhere, including access to multiple e-mail accounts, Amazon.com, The New York Times' Web site and E-ZPass electronic toll statements.

In such cases, should hackers or scammers compromise one account, they potentially have one's entire online life.

"This is one of these things that if I stop and think about it, it is not good, but I do my best not to stop and think about it," said Hoffacker, an information technology manager in New York.

Password harvesting

But it's difficult to remember dozens of strong passwords -- so many sites now require them. Alternatives include writing them down on a sticky note attached to a monitor or in an electronic spreadsheet -- practices security experts also deem unsafe.

Software such as Symantec Corp.'s Norton Password Manager and Apple Computer Inc.'s Keychain help store passwords in secure, encrypted form. But if you compromise the master password, you're out of luck. Your entire collection is gone.

Many sites, meanwhile, will e-mail passwords insecurely -- without encryption -- if you forget. A site called BugMeNot.com even encourages users to share passwords for nonfinancial sites like newspapers.

The tools of password harvesting are many:

Keystroke recorders secretly installed at public Internet terminals can capture passwords, as can "phishing" e-mails designed to trick users into submitting sensitive data to fraudulent sites that look authentic. There are computer viruses programmed to harvest passwords as well as software that guesses passwords by running through words in dictionaries.

Though analysts have no hard figures on password-specific fraud, they blame insecure passwords for unauthorized financial transfers, privacy breaches and even the hacking of corporate networks.

With two-factor authentication, having a password alone is useless.

"We will never play the fear factor here, but still it stays a fact that with our products, phishing is no longer an issue," said Jochem Binst of Vasco Data Security International Inc.

The Belgian company issues devices the size of pocket calculators or keychains. You type your regular password into the device for a second code that is based on the time and the unit's unique characteristics. That's the code you type into the Web site.

Someone who steals your device won't have your password; someone who steals your password won't have your device.

Two-factor authentication

MasterCard International Inc. has been testing similar systems in Britain, Germany and Brazil. Swipe a credit card with a smart chip into a special reader, enter your PIN and obtain a password good only once at Office Max, British Airways and a dozen other merchants.

In Singapore, bank customers wishing to designate new accounts for fund transfers must likewise obtain a second password -- through a phone call, e-mail or mobile text messaging.

Biometric systems are similar, except a fingerprint or iris scan replaces one or both passwords.

In the United States, use of two-factor authentication remains limited. RSA Security Inc. has several products, including RSA SecurID, but they are primarily issued to employees for remote network access and to customers with high-value portfolios.

"There's a delicate balance between maintaining security but also providing customers with ease of use," said Doug Johnson, senior policy analyst at the American Bankers Association.

Gartner analyst Avivah Litan said banks are "all afraid of making the first step. They don't want consumers going to other banks because it's too hard."

U.S. banks and e-commerce companies have focused, for now, on making sure passwords are strong. EBay, for instance, now rejects attempts to create passwords such as "ebay" or "password."

Before two-factor authentication becomes commonplace, laptops must come standard with biometric readers, or manufacturers must bring down costs for password-generating devices.

Outfitting 1 million customers with such devices could cost $20 million, while Internet fraud for those customers amounts to "tens of thousands at most," said Tony Chew, director of technology risk supervision at the Monetary Authority of Singapore. Singapore banks thus limit dynamic passwords to fund transfers, he said.

Setting standards

Companies also need to set standards.

Though Jubran enjoys her bank's scratch-off passwords, she wouldn't want the Amazon.coms of the world all adopting them as well.

"It would be too complicated to have 10 different cards you scrape off," the 24-year-old medical student said.

Jason Lewis, vice president of product management at RSA Security, figures companies will have to create services so a single device can work on multiple sites.

Nordea and other Scandinavian banks already have partnered with government agencies and utilities, and an identity-management coalition called the Liberty Alliance Project has begun to explore standards.

People will pay more attention to security as they keep more of their lives online, said Robert Chesnut, eBay's vice president for rules, trust and safety. He offered this analogy: "The more stuff you have in your house, the better the deadbolt lock you have."

2004/06/17

NEW YORK (AP) -- Alas, wireless Internet may not be the technology sector's salvation after all.

Small companies, some publicly traded, are burning cash trying to turn Wi-Fi into viable business. Some have already shut down.

Faster than you can say "industry bubble," skeptics are asking whether wireless Internet connections will become similar to the wired Internet of the late 1990s -- hot but rarely profitable.

"Anyone trying to build a stand-alone business on Wi-Fi access should be worried," said analyst John Yunker of Byte Level Research. "It's not a stand-alone business, it's an add-on to other communications businesses, the cable bill or the DSL bill."

Wi-Fi, short for wireless fidelity, appeals most to people with laptops and personal digital assistants. It radiates an Internet connection to users within 300 feet -- a zone known as a "hotspot".

Wi-Fi gear is shrinking in both size and price, to the point where Wi-Fi connections eventually could be built into power strips. The fact that Wi-Fi uses unlicensed bands of the radio spectrum makes it even cheaper to deploy.

Of course, the low costs can be a huge plus for companies trying to turn the technology into a profitable business.

David Hagan, president of Boingo Wireless Inc., an aggregator that sells for $21.95 a month access to 6,000 hot spots deployed by other companies, said the 3-year-old company's main cost is its 70 employees. He expects Boingo to become profitable by 2006.

"We have the cash to get there," he said.

Shifting business models

But the talk of the industry is whether Wi-Fi service will eventually be free -- with the technology's low cost frequently borne by stores that hope wireless Internet access will encourage customers to linger.

Cities such as San Jose, California; Spokane, Washington; and Austin, Texas, have set up free hotspots. Companies including Best Western International Inc. hotels and Panera Bread Co. give away Wi-Fi access to lure customers.

Verizon Communications Inc. gives its DSL customers free access to the company's New York hotspots.

After being launched in 2002 with an ambitious plan for a national chain of hot spots, Cometa Networks Inc., whose investors included AT&T Corp., Intel Corp. and IBM Corp., shut down in May, saying it had run out of money.

Other Wi-Fi companies have had to alter their business model. Wayport Inc., which hastened Cometa's end when it got the contract to set up Wi-Fi in 6,000 McDonald's Corp. restaurants, began by selling access to consumers but announced plans in May to adopt a wholesale model.

That means Wayport will charge restaurants, hotels or convention centers to build, set up and maintain Wi-Fi hotspots while the venue or a separate service provider sells or gives away the connections.

Wayport, founded in 1998 and funded by venture capitalists, is not profitable, said Dan Lowden, its vice president of marketing.

Wayport and wireless phone provider T-Mobile USA Inc. are the two biggest Wi-Fi service providers, accounting for 95 percent of the nation's hotspots, according to Phillip Redman, research vice president at Gartner Inc.

Meanwhile, several tiny Wi-Fi companies are still trying to cash in around the edges. Because deploying Wi-Fi is so cheap and easy, "it's kind of been a Wild West environment, where anyone can set up a hot spot and try to sell service," said Roberta Wiggins, a research fellow at the Yankee Group.

Uncertain financial future

Yunker of Byte Level Research suggested that investors be careful with Wi-Fi stocks.

Siricomm Inc., whose shares trades over the counter rather than on a major exchange, is trying to build a private Wi-Fi network in truck stops and weigh stations. The company hopes to offer the service for $49.99 a month starting in September. It has a deal to install hot spots in 255 Pilot Travel Centers and it's in talks with states about the weigh stations.

From its inception in 2000 through its most recent quarterly report, the company has had no revenue and total losses of $5.1 million. Still, chief financial officer Richard Iler believes Siricomm will find success in turning some of the nation's 4 million truckers into "knowledge workers," letting them use wireless Internet access to structure routes and loads.

ICOA Inc., which also trades over the counter, is just as enthusiastic, even after losing $2.5 million in the last two years. Its auditors expressed substantial doubt about its ability to continue as a going concern in recent Securities and Exchange Commission filings.

Erwin Vahlsing, its chief financial officer, said it should be "cash flow positive" in six to nine months. ICOA installs and manages Wi-Fi equipment for clients, including Panera Bread.

"A lot of what we've done has been putting a structure in place that can support a lot of volume," he said. "Now we're moving toward getting that volume."

Roomlinx Inc., which installs and maintains hot spots in hotels, hopes to issue 205 million shares of new stock, despite a net loss of $915,000 for the most recent quarter.

One small over-the-counter company, R Wireless, recently left the business after building only one hot spot, at an office building in New York.

Why stop now? "Management believes that only Wi-Fi equipment manufacturers are currently successful in generating profits in the Wi-Fi industry, and service providers have yet to develop a profitable business model," the company said in its most recent quarterly report.

And so, the filing said, R Wireless "has started looking for alternative realization opportunities."