Word: crosses
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...notion of a cashless economy facilitated by databanks of digitized body parts is still kind of far out. But then, so are most things about Cross Match. The company was founded in 1996 by Scott, a medical ultrasound specialist, and two fellow engineers turned garage inventors, Jim Davis, who worked on the engine of the SR-71 Blackbird at Lockheed, and Ellis Betensky, who improved Vivitar zoom lenses and pioneered computer-aided design for cameras...
...been a gold-rush mentality for years in the biometric space. The problem is, nobody's really found the gold yet." Three biometrics companies merged to form Identix, based in Minneapolis, Minn., which with $92 million in revenues is considered the world's leading biometric-security company. It is Cross Match's only U.S. rival for sales of the high-resolution, forensic-quality live-scan machines, which capture fingerprints with inkless optical-scanning technology and transmit them to central databases. While Identix's scanners are bigger and pricier than most of the smaller company's comparable products, the two firms...
Government contracts, as they have in the past, could promote consumer product development too, especially as people get more comfortable with the technology. And that means making them foolproof and fiendproof. Cross Match's fingerprint Authorizer, for instance, has inspired its designers to anticipate an underworld market in Authorizer-equipped cell phones being operated with lopped-off fingers. "No system would fly if part of your anatomy is threatened and is necessary to secure what could be substantial assets," says Scott. So the sensor in the phone doesn't merely read a static fingerprint. It also looks for proof...
...more down-to-earth level, the Authorizer is being considered as an optional feature by at least one car manufacturer, according to Cross Match officials. Besides thwarting thieves, it could be programmed to prevent your 17-year-old from going faster than, say, 55 m.p.h. by activating a speed limiter and to play dead if your 14-year-old had the bright idea to get behind the wheel...
...time, the FBI's Criminal Justice Information System (CJIS) facility in Clarksburg, W.Va., was scanning its vast collection of ink-and-paper fingerprint cards into a digital database that could be searched by computer. The Cross Match founders spotted an empty niche for light, rugged, relatively inexpensive live-scan fingerprint machines. Borrowing $250,000 from relatives and friends, they came up with a 23-lb., $10,000 optical scanner that produced high-resolution, forensic-quality print images. It could fit in a backpack, and its calibration was not thrown off by jarring from a squad car or humvee...