Aida Akl
Aida Akl is a journalist working on VOA's English Webdesk. She has written on a wide range of topics, although her more recent contributions have focused on technology. She has covered both domestic and international events since the mid-1980s as a VOA reporter and international broadcaster.

All posts by Aida Akl

The Future of VR; User-Aided Hack Attacks; Android’s ‘Trusted Voice’

Posted April 14th, 2015 at 2:00 pm (UTC-5)
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Today’s Tech Sightings: Google Malaysia Service Disrupted by Hackers Users of Google’s Malaysia website got redirected Tuesday to a hacked site. A Google Malaysia spokesperson told Reuters the company has contacted the group that administers the domain name to address the issue. Likewise, Chinese hackers are said to be spying on governments in Southeast Asia […]

Identity Theft Victim? Don’t Panic. Take Action.

Posted April 10th, 2015 at 2:00 pm (UTC-5)
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Like it or not, some of your personal data is probably on the Internet. And even if you diligently try to protect the information about you that’s “out there,” it could still end up in the hands of an identity thief. Whether it’s on a compromised company server, or on a laptop left on a […]

Teens & Smartphones; One-armed Robots; Lego Dimensions

Posted April 9th, 2015 at 2:00 pm (UTC-5)
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Today’s Tech Sightings: Study: Most Teens Rely on Smartphones to Go Online A Pew Research Center survey of more than 1,000 teens aged 13-17 found that 91 percent of them go online using their mobile devices. Black and Latino teens used the Internet more frequently, with 34 percent of black teens and 32 percent of […]

Ad Malware; Ozzie the Goose; IoT Insecurity; Microsoft Mobile Payments

Posted April 8th, 2015 at 2:00 pm (UTC-5)
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Today’s Tech Sightings: Malicious, Large-Scale Google Ad Campaign Slams Users With Malware Researchers with Dutch security company Fox-IT found that advertisements distributed by Engage Lab, one of Google’s advertising partners in Bulgaria, redirect users to the Web-based Nuclear Exploit Kit. This particular exploit attempts to install malware on users’ computers by targeting vulnerabilities in Adobe Flash […]

Smartphones vs. Wearables; Flexible Battery; Bitcoin Foundation Bankrupt?

Posted April 7th, 2015 at 2:00 pm (UTC-5)
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Today’s Tech Sightings: Apple, Google agree Only Wearables Can Save Humanity From Evil Smartphones These two tech giants don’t agree on much, but writer Chris O’Brien argues that Google and Apple, both fierce competitors in the smartphone market, see smartphones as a malady inflicting phone addiction and anti-social behavior on society. And the two giants, […]

Gaming Gives Expression to the Horrors of Genocide, War

Posted April 3rd, 2015 at 2:00 pm (UTC-5)
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Twenty one years ago, on April 7, 1994, Hutu militias armed with clubs and machetes began a 100-day genocidal massacre of Rwanda’s minority Tutsi. When they were done, an estimated 800,000 people had perished. In 2008, Jamie Antonisse, then a student at the University of Southern California’s Interactive Media MFA program, selected for a class project the […]

Silicon Valley Diversity; S. Korea Lifts Browser Rule; Can Tech Save Failing Aircraft?

Posted April 2nd, 2015 at 2:00 pm (UTC-5)
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Today’s Tech Sightings: Can Technology Steer a Plane Away From Disaster? The Germanwings Flight 9525 that was deliberately slammed into the French Alps last week, killing 150 people, has ignited renewed calls among aviation experts to develop and deploy software that can control an aircraft and automatically steer it to safety if it loses altitude. […]

Creating Shapes in Mid-Air; Apple in China; April Fools’ Gags

Posted April 1st, 2015 at 2:00 pm (UTC-5)
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Today’s Tech Sightings: New Tech Creates Buttons, Shapes in Mid-Air UltraHaptics, a British company, has come up with technology that uses sound waves to project sensations of tactile, three-dimensional shapes through the air and to the user. So for example, air pressure changes are perceived as suspended, tangible interfaces. That could potentially mean a person […]

Silicon Valley’s Gender Culture; GitHub vs. China; Drones on a Mission

Posted March 31st, 2015 at 2:19 pm (UTC-5)
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Today’s Tech Sightings: Women in Silicon Valley Objectified, Paid Less Than Male Counterparts Technology trade shows have a name for them: so-called booth babes, meaning scantily-dressed women hired to tout tech gadgets. Now, some associations are banning this culture, saying it is demeaning to women. Adding insult to injury, a recent study from research group […]

UN-Habitat Minecrafts the World, Block by Block

Posted March 27th, 2015 at 2:00 pm (UTC-5)
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Millions of people around the world play Minecraft or use its textured cubes to unleash their creativity, sometimes recreating entire cities. But UN-Habitat has taken Minecraft to a whole new level to involve young people in renovating their world. A couple of years ago, the Lotus Gardens in Mumbai, India looked like this: Now the […]