As mobile phones begin functioning more like minicomputers, they also take on more security risks.

That's why the School of Computer Science at the Georgia Institute of Technology recently received a $450,000 grant from the National Science Foundation to work toward developing safer mobile devices and telecommunication networks that serve such devices. The project's researchers hope to protect mobile devices from viruses and malware that can steal personal information.

“Since mobile phones typically lack security features found on desktop computers, such as antivirus software, we need to accept that the mobile devices will ultimately be successfully attacked," said Jonathon Giffin, an assistant professor in the School of Computer Science, in a news release. "Therefore our research focus is to develop effective attack-recovery strategies.”

First,...

Forget tour guides. A new iPhone application may be able to replicate the quintessential college tour, minus the huge crowds and backward walking.

The application, created by a Yale University student and two high-school students, provides information on about 100 different locations on the campuses of four universities -- Yale, Harvard, Stanford, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. If approved by Apple, the four tours will be available for $10. The students hope to add tours of other colleges and universities as well.

People with iPhones can get information on campus landmarks if they hold their devices in front of them as they walk. Using the iPhone's tracking of GPS coordinates, the program can figure out the user's location. Using a compass, it can determine what buildings the person is facing, and then match that information with 100 key locations on...

College researchers work on some out-there technology projects. They may not lead to everday products, but they can help us rethink mundane facts of life. Here are three recent projects that caught our eye, in what is the first of an occasional series:

Eye of the Beholder

If you are jealous of the way the Arnold Schwarzenegger robotic character could see information about the world around him superimposed over whatever he was looking at in The Terminator, you might want to pay attention to the work of Babak A. Parviz at the University of Washington.

Mr. Parviz and his team of students have developed a contact lens with a built-in computer display, and it's powered by wireless radio waves. For now, this...

Students at far-flung campuses can now participate simultaneously during lectures with the push of a button.

The University of British Columbia recently completed a trial of a new satellite polling system by i>clicker, which sells student-response systems. The new system allowed students on three campuses, all part of the university's Distributed Undergraduate Medical Program, to respond to questions in a simulcast lecture . I>clicker hopes to make the product widely available by January 2010.

Clickers allow teachers to electronically “poll the audience” (as in TV game shows like Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?). They first appeared in classrooms about five years ago as a means to increases student participation in large lecture courses. The company claims that this is...

After giving a campus tour of National Taiwan University, the guide needs to recharge -- literally.

Engineering students have created a robot that can give guided tours around the university, both outdoors and inside a campus museum, the university says.

The robot, which is about three feet tall, uses GPS and a laser sonar system that helps it avoid obstacles. A student programs a pre-established route using wireless remote controls.

The robot, named Hsiao Mei by the students who created it, also uses cameras in its eyes to tell where people are and respond to them, and has some facial expressions, according to Network World. The robot can also show video clips on its...

This morning Amazon’s chief executive, Jeff Bezos, held up a new, wider model of the Kindle loaded with a biology textbook — marking the company’s official entrance into the electronic-textbook market.

The news had been widely leaked all week, and the rumors turned out to be true. The screen on the new version of Kindle is 9.7 inches across — much bigger than the other Kindle, which will still be offered. And the company has set up pilot projects this fall at six higher-education institutions — Arizona State University, Case Western Reserve University, Pace University, Princeton University, Reed College, and the University of Virginia’s business school.

New details included the price: $489. And the publishers involved with the pilot projects: Pearson, Cengage Learning, and John Wiley & Sons.

I offered my take on...

Rumors are buzzing this week that Amazon is set to unveil a new, wider-format version of its Kindle e-book reader in the hopes of making it a platform for electronic textbooks.

Amazon has invited journalists to a news-media event tomorrow morning at Pace University for a big announcement, and though officials from Amazon and Pace refused to talk to The Chronicle, anonymous sources told The Wall Street Journal that the company will unveil a bigger model of the Kindle and describe a pilot project with six major universities to try textbooks on it. The company will announce new deals with magazine and newspaper publishers, the newspaper said.

But a previous effort to use e-book readers in the classroom bombed, and it’s not clear how Amazon will do any better.

In

After disparaging Nicholas Negroponte’s One Laptop Per Child program as too expensive, the Indian government has caved in. Following the embarrassment over its own $10 laptop — which turned out to be a computing device with a hard disk for storage — the nation signed an agreement to buy 250,000 OLPC laptops for distribution across the country, reported efytimes.com.

In turn, the struggling OLPC program — which has run into problems after large companies refused to cooperate with it — will get a much-needed financial boost from India’s contract. Intel resigned its membership from the project in January 2008, citing Mr. Negroponte’s request that the company stop selling its Classmate Personal Computers below...

Paras Kaul wants you to listen to her brainwaves.

Ms. Kaul, director of Web communications at George Mason University, is better known as the “BrainWave Chick.” With electrodes and digital technology, she has devised increasingly sophisticated ways to perform the music of her mind. (It’s got an eerie, ethereal sound, something like Brian Eno’s ambient compositions.)

To project her brainwaves, Ms. Kaul wears a headband that presses three electrodes against her brain’s frontal lobe. A Bluetooth adapter transmits data to a laptop, where software converts brainwaves to a Musical Instrument Digital Interface, and synthesizers play it.

“All I have to...

Separate surveys conducted recently on two college campuses returned mixed signals on the sorts of capabilities students desire from their mobile devices.

One survey, conducted by Michael Hanley, an assistant professor of journalism at Ball State University, found that 27 percent of respondents on his campus reported owning a smartphone—a mobile device with advanced capabilities, like an iPhone or BlackBerry—as opposed to what nationwide surveys have determined to be the national rate for working adults (19 percent). That study used a voluntary-response sample of 314 Ball State students.

Another survey, orchestrated by Chuck Martin of the University of New Hampshire’s school of business and economics, polled 707 students across the university’s six colleges about how they use their mobile devices and what new features they think would...