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Gemalto announced it is delivering 900,000 of its Sealys Laser-Secured electronic identification cards to the Ministry of Interior of Lithuania.

The card features contactless technology, which stores a fingerprint biometrics, for identity verification at border crossings. It also embeds a contact microprocessor that contains a certificate for online identification and a certificate for electronically signing official documents such as contracts and declarations.
 Gemalto delivers the cards to its local partner Lodvila, a security printing company in Lithuania and prime contractor on the project.

The Gemalto e-ID card is made of polycarbonate, with all personal data laser-engraved in the card. The national ID card is mandatory for all citizens above 16 and also serves as a travel document in all European Union countries. National rollout started on January 5.


Lithuania determined to deploy this national ID card in order to allow citizens to travel freely between EU member states, as well as to benefit from national and European e-government services. With this e-ID card, Lithuania has taken the first step towards the implementation of the European Citizen Card standard.



Gemalto is involved with numerous e-ID programs, including Bahrain, Belgium, Finland, Oman, Portugal, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Sweden and UAE.

Alaskan state senator, Bill Wielechowski, has introduced a bill to the state congress that intends to protect Alaskan citizens from having their biometric information collected or used without their knowing and consent, according to a KTVA 11 article. The bill is intended as an update to previously passed legislation that outlawed the collection of a citizen’s biometric information without their consent.

The congressman’s hope is that the bill will assuage fears over the misuse of biometric information such as potential employers using DNA samples to determine one’s tendency towards certain ailments or the tracking of citizen’s via facial recognition and video surveillance. As biometric technology and its adoption continues to grow, governments continue to try to establish laws and standards to keep misuse at a minimum and security of the data at a premium.

Aviva is rolling out an online trading platform and a new web site for brokers, in a move intended to improve document management and access to product information.

The new web site offers a simpler way for brokers to access product information and manage claims online. Other new features include the option to customise the web site to brokers’ needs and improved quote facilities, cover and documentation.

The new trading platform, dubbed FastTrade, offers an online quote-and-buy facility for small business insurance. It aims to offer a simpler end-to-end process with instant documentation for six small business packages – including a new one for small commercial property owners.

"We have listened to what our brokers say is important to them and as a result have created a site that is not only easy to use but also gives the broker more control over what they see,” said director of business development at Aviva, John Kennedy.

Both web site and trading platform will be launched ahead of Norwich Union's name change on 1 June. The new systems replace Norwich Union’s previous broker web site and commercial e-services system, respectively.

The Ennova Direct Corporation, a developer of new consumer technologies, has announced that the United States Patent and Trademark Office has granted them a patent for their retractable USB flash drive with fingerprint scanner and OLED interface screen. The OLED screen on the device houses the scanner, alerts a user whether or not their print was accepted as well as enabling users to perform basic functions such as selecting files.

Ennova has been awarded a number of patents for USB devices in the past including other retractable flash drives containing secondary technologies. The new biometric flash drive is expected to be released in the first quarter of 2010 under their ION Technologies brand. 

South Korea’s Suprema Inc., a provider of fingerprint recognition and identity management solutions, has announced the certification of its RealScan-10 print scanner by the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation.

The FBI certification signifies that the device is in full compliance with Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System (IAFIS) Image Quality Specification (IQS) Appendix F standards. Meeting these standards is mandatory for a scanning system to be purchased by the FBI and other government agencies, both in the U.S. and many other countries.

Suprema’s RealScan-10 is a compact-sized, portable ten-print live scanner. It is designed to perform high-speed image capturing for single finger flats, rolls and four-finger slaps; it then transfer image data to PC via a high speed USB2.0 connection.

Suprema is the first Asian firm to meet the FBI IQS Appendix F standards for ten-print live-scanning technology.

Apart from being more dependable than solar energy, wind energy has always been a secondary choice for all eco-minded home owners. Reasons include bird kills, noise and the decrease in the output when wind changes direction. A concept wind turbine designed by Industrie-SA can answer all these problems with a clever design. The vertical axis turbine is designed for urban environments having windy conditions.

Lockheed Martin hosted four industry leaders in vascular, voice and signature recognition at its Biometric Experimentation and Advanced Concepts (BEACON) in West Virginia, a space intent on collaborating between industry, government and academia in the field of biometrics. The four companies invited were Identica, PerSay, Speech Technology Center and Noninvasive Medical Technologies.

The intent behind the forum of industry leaders, called Biometrics on the Edge, was a combination of demonstrating new technologies while speaking of their applications in fields such as law enforcement and national defense. Additionally, the four companies representatives attended a presentation from West Virginia University on the future of biometrics.

Windows 7 is finally nearing it’s completion, and the Release Candidate is finally available. After installing the Windows 7 Beta Build 7000 back in December on my PC at home, i decided to upgrade my work Laptop to Windows 7. The score to the right is from my Laptop.

First of all, i had Bitlocker enabled on my ThinkPad W500, which was running Windows Vista x32 and i intended to install Windows 7 x64. So a direct inplace upgrade was out of the question. I created a backup of the machine, disabled Bitlocker, upgraded my laptops BIOS to the latest version, and booted Windows 7 setup from an USB stick.

Next, i pressed Shift-F10 on the setup screen, deleted all the Windows and Program Files folders, and then started an installation directly on the Bitlocker-enabled drive (this way, i didn’t have to restore all the files i already had on the drive, saving me valuable time).

Windows 7 was done after about 25 minutes, and greeted me with Aero enabled and the 1920×1200 15″ screen already set to a scaling factor of 125%. This is were i also noticed that DPI settings are now user dependant, instead of affecting the whole system. An extremely nice feature, that probably needed quite a bit of work. I set the scaling factor to 115%, which is the best factor between readability and remaining screen real estate for me.

Unfortunately, the switchable graphics driver available from Lenovo did not support WDDM 1.1. I went into the BIOS and configured the machine to always use the Intel graphics. However, i noticed that unlike in Vista, the Intel graphic card did not produce 100% smooth Aero animations. Since i have the power supply connected most of the time anyway, i configured the system to always use the ATI card. This produced better results.

The fingerprint reader does not work yet, but i didn’t invest time in that since i don’t use it anyway. Also, there are issues with Intel AMT, which i don’t use either.

So the base OS worked flawlessly after install. Even switching the graphics card around didn’t phase it, Aero was automatically enabled and the correct resolution configured. WLAN, Audio, everything you would need worked out of the Box.

I joined the machine to the domain, where it sucked down all the GPOs for our corporate network. I unplugged the network cable, and it automatically connected to the corporate wireless network, authenticated by EAP-TLS.

Since our printserver is WS08 x64 box, corporate printing also worked automatically, without any additional work. Of course, all the other group policy settings applied as they should, and i didn’t find any issues yet regarding policy settings.

But an OS alone doesn’t serve a purpose, you need applications. I’ve installed the following applications:

• Adobe Reader 9.1 Works perfectly.
• DIAS-iS Network Client 3.2 Works perfectly.
• DIAS-iS OSP Version 3 for Office 2007 Works perfectly.
• Office 2007 SP1 Enterprise, Visio and PDF/XPS plugin Works perfectly.
• Office 2007 Primary Interop Assemblies Works perfectly.
• Office 2007 VSTO 3.0 Works perfectly.
• Office 2007 Communicator R1 with latest Hotfix Works perfectly.
• Solitas InfoStore Windows Retrieval Works perfectly.
• IBM System i Access V6R1M0 x64 Works perfectly.
• IrfanView Works perfectly.
• Mozilla Firefox 3.1b3 Works perfectly.
• PuTTY 0.60 Works perfectly.
• SonicWALL Global VPN Client x64 Sometimes loses it’s IPsec driver - repairing the program helps.
• Windows Live Messenger Works perfectly.
• Virtual CloneDrive Works perfectly.
• WinRAR Works perfectly.
• tn5250 Works perfectly.

So far, so good. The SonicWALL issue may be annoying, but it’s not a dealbreaker. Judging from my experience, it’s a SonicWALL issue. Opening a bug there won’t help, as they don’t support Windows 7 yet. I can live with that.

Perfomance on Windows 7 on this machine is even better than Vista. I can now fully use the 4GB RAM installed in my laptop. Never used Windows XP on this machine, i can’t compare performance. All the business apps i need to do my job work flawlessly. Printing works flawlessly.

Windows 7 is even better than Vista. But for those that didn’t spend the last three years using Windows Vista, it may be rather hard to get used to all the new stuff. For example, the deployment options between 7 and Vista are both based on WIM imaging, with a few improvements here and there. If you know how to do it on Vista, you can also do it in Windows 7.

As a bonus, the score to the right from my desktop PC.

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