markhollands.com.au

Cool new technology for doing biometrics.

Finger vein authentication, introduced widely by Japanese banks in the last two years, is claimed to be the fastest and most secure biometric method. Developed by Hitachi, it verifies a person’s identity based on the lattice work of minute blood vessels under the skin.

They need to miniturise this stuff so they can get it into mobile devices. Seamless, difficult to fake authentication was one of the key features of the recent Adaptive Path mobile innovation video.

The pattern of blood vessels is captured by transmitting near-infrared light at different angles through the finger, usually the middle finger. This can be done in a small instrument attached to a wall or as part of an ATM machine. The light is partially absorbed by haemoglobin in the veins and the pattern is captured by a camera as a unique 3D finger vein profile. This is turned into a simple digital code which is then matched with a pre-registered profile to verify an individual’s identity. Even twins are said to have different finger vein patterns.

Hitachi claims that because the veins are inside the body, invisible to the eye, it is extremely difficult to forge and impossible to manipulate. While fingerprints can be “lifted” and retinas scanned without an individual realising it, it is extremely unlikely that people’s finger vein profiles can be taken without them being aware of it, the company says.

I wonder how complicated the profile input scanning process is, if they can be sure that someone’s finger vein profile cannot be taken without their awareness.

The gruesome possibility that criminals may hack off a finger has already been discounted by Hitachi’s scientists. Asked if authentication could be “forged” with a severed finger, the company says: “As blood would flow out of a disconnected finger, authentication would no longer be possible.”

There is one solid plus over fingerprint technology. Not losing a finger is always a good thing.

The gadget-lust I’ve been experiencing when I’ve been seeing iPhone 3G’s in the wild has been difficult to control, but the lack of any halfway reasonable data plan from any of the 3 networks has helped me to stop myself from committing to it for 24 months. I’ve been following the development of the OpenMoko open source handset movement for a while now. While the form factor isn’t quite as nice as the iPhone, its heavier and deeper than Apple’s release, the fact that all the hardware and software is open source is a significant selling point. I’ve been reading about the hoops that Apple has been making developers jump through in order to get their apps on the iPhone and it doesn’t sound appealing.

I just read about an effort by Techcrunch to create the OpenMoko equivalent of web tablet.

Here’s the basic idea: The machine is as thin as possible, runs low end hardware and has a single button for powering it on and off, headphone jacks, a built in camera for video, low end speakers, and a microphone. It will have Wifi, maybe one USB port, a built in battery, half a Gigabyte of RAM, a 4-Gigabyte solid state hard drive. Data input is primarily through an iPhone-like touch screen keyboard. It runs on linux and Firefox. It would be great to have it be built entirely on open source hardware, but including Skype for VOIP and video calls may be a nice touch, too.

I like this trend towards open source hardware. While it might take a while to reach the mainstream, as it matures it should get hardware manufacturers to consider whether it is cheaper to design a gadget from scratch or comply with the open standards.