The look and feel of just about every gadget imaginable could be changed by technology supplied by a pair of Chicago-area companies that are promoting a major switch switch.
It’s a subtle, but appealing notion: Users ought to be able to turn a device on or off and otherwise control it by just the gentlest touch, not with a hard push to flip a switch.
“When you just put your finger on a piece of hard plastic or glass, that’s enough to activate our switch,” said Thomas Schreiber, president of Touch Sensor Technologies in Wheaton, a subsidiary of Gemtron Corp. in Sweetwater, Tenn. “You can press hard if you want, but it just flattens your finger, it doesn’t move anything in the switch.”
Schreiber’s company has designed a computer chip that creates an electrical field on a glass or plastic surface. When a human finger touches that surface, it disturbs the field, activating the switch. This kind of switch is less expensive, takes less space than a mechanical switch and lasts almost forever, Schreiber said.
The company has been supplying its field-effect switches to makers of stoves, washers, dryers and other large appliances.
Other switch-users include soda pop dispensers, vending machines, fitness workout machines and equipment designed for industrial factory use.
But there are many more places that could use this technology, Schreiber said. His company has made a deal with Materials Science Corp. of Elk Grove Village to supply field-effect switches to the transportation and consumer electronics sectors.
“With no moving parts, nothing mechanical to break, this is going to replace most mechanical and membrane switches now being used,” said Gerald Nadig, MCS’s chief executive. “Any potential customer you approach will give this technology a hearing. It’s really a quantum leap over what’s available now. Everybody wants to know how to engineer this into their products.”
Field-effect switches can be contoured to fit the human finger and fitted with lights to attract attention or decorate the product using the switch, Schreiber said, “so the industrial design guys can have a lot of fun with it.”
Pay phone: SBC Ameritech has proposed paying about $50 in rebates to every residential and small business customer in Illinois to settle questions about how much the merger between SBC Communications and Ameritech should save customers.
The Illinois Commerce Commission is considering the proposal, which is worth an estimated $224 million. An alternative would be extensive audits to determine exactly what the merger savings actually are. While the phone company claims the savings aren’t great, consumer groups contend they are huge.
The company may have good reason to eschew lengthy audits. In California, Ameritech’s sister company, SBC PacBell, recently underwent an audit ordered by state regulators that found the phone company had hidden about $2 billion in profits over a three-year period and owes its customers rebates that add up to nearly $350 million.
SBC disputes the California audit’s findings.
Cybercrimes: While there still may be plenty of teenagers hacking into computer systems as a prank, a lot of damage suffered by business computer systems these days is caused by disgruntled employees and former employees, said Bart Lazar, a partner in the Chicago office of the Seyfarth Shaw law firm.
Armed with an insider’s knowledge, the employee with a grudge can hurt a company more deeply than an outside vandal, Lazar said.
Law enforcement authorities are aware of the problem, but often lack the resources to prosecute computer criminals, Lazar said. In a cybercrime seminar for Chicago businesses last week sponsored by Lazar’s firm, representatives of the FBI and the U.S. Attorney’s office said that last year there were about 1,200 federal crimes prosecuted here and only some 30 involved cybercrime.
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“They have limited resources,” Lazar said. “They investigate a lot of cybercrime, but just can’t prosecute them all.”
But that doesn’t mean a company cannot go after someone who does serious damage through a computer network.
“A civil action is the best way to try to get reimbursed for damages,” Lazar said. “It is unusual in a criminal case for a company to be awarded damages, so a civil case is preferable.”
And once a company’s lawyers build a strong civil case against a hacker, the information can then be turned over to prosecutors for criminal action, he said.
“Many cybercrimes that are prosecuted criminally build upon evidence turned up through civil discovery,” he said.