Author Archive

John Breeden II

John Breeden II is a freelance technology writer for GCN.
Defense Systems

Concept from WWII dazzle ships being applied to spoof facial recognition scanners

An artist finds that the same approach used in World War I to confound the rangefinders on attacking ships will prevent a facial scanner from recognizing you.

Defense Systems

Falcon is 'Navy SEAL of the UPS world'

The SSGKRP-1 Uninterrupted Power Supply from Falcon Electric has both brains and brawn, and performs hot, cold and dirty.

Defense Systems

Navy SEALS carried tools to extract data during raid

A look at some of the technology used to quickly and, when necessary, stealthily collect information at bin Laden's compound and other locations.

Defense Systems

Time ran out for bin Laden thanks to latest tech

Terrorist leader Osama bin Laden's low-tech approach kept him hidden for years. But being off the grid eventually helped expose him, and new technology assisted in finding him.

Defense Systems

Padlock secures data without slowing down collaboration

The Aegis Padlock, a 750G, solid-state hard drive with fast transfer rates, is a secure way to store data.

Defense Systems

Steelhead appliance can cut latency out of the cloud

The Steelhead appliance from Riverbed Technology uses wide-area network optimization techniques to reduce or eliminate the nagging problem of latency in the cloud.

Defense Systems

Rugged Getac laptop takes on the Lab's Thunderdome

The Getac B300 has a surprising number of features not found in all rugged laptops these days, such as lots of external ports and a fully functional DVD drive.

Defense Systems

Remote tents can morph into war rooms with this rugged display system

The GCN Lab takes HDT Technologies' rugged interactive whiteboard system out for a field test.

Defense Systems

Toughbook 31 has the brains to go with the brawn

The GCN Lab kicks the tires on the new Panasonic Toughbook 31 and finds a fully rugged laptop PC with the power of a good desktop.

Defense Systems

NFL technology is in play on the battlefield

The idea of the military tapping replay technology used by the National Football League to manage the fast-growing volume of battlefield video shouldn’t be overturned, GCN Lab director John Breeden writes.

Defense Systems

Can DARPA get a flying car off the ground?

GCN Lab director John Breeden is glad to see that DARPA is putting serious research into developing a flying car, like we were promised by futurists decades ago.

Defense Systems

Nexus One: All that and a trackball

Google ups the ante in the smart phone frenzy with the Nexus One, a smart phone running the Android OS.

Defense Systems

Droid does it better

The new Verizon Wireless Droid by Motorola is a phone that could really change the industry, and the way the federal government does its job.

Defense Systems

Open source comes to Army Go Mobile program

The Army’s Maj. Keith Parker demos the Go Mobile kit to the GCN Lab.

Defense Systems

Windows 7 review: 'New' OS is just Vista with small changes

Microsoft's Windows 7 has been touted as a new, better-running operating system. But despite the addition of a few handy features, the GCN Lab finds that it looks just like the Vista OS, has a lot of the same annoying quirks as Vista and delivers no difference in performance from Vista.