We talk with Rosalind W. Picard, she’s the founder and director of the Affective Computing research group at the MIT Media Lab and leader of the Autism & Communication Technology Initiative at MIT. She and a team of researchers have created the Q Sensor wristband. It measures the so-called fight-or-flight response that the subject may be feeling, as well as skin temperature and motion. It’s hoped that by taking these multiple factors into account, the wearer can be understood in ways that his or her words are unable to express.

We also to talk to Katie Cremins, an occupational therapist and clinical coordinator at Giant Steps School in Connecticut. That’s a school that works with children who have been diagnosed as being on the autism spectrum. They’ve been trying the Q Sensor for a while, leading up to its recent commercial release. She gives us an update on how it’s working out and what this might mean to the greater autism community in the long run.

Also on this show, we hear about a new way of fighting Firesheep. As we reported a while back, Firesheep is a browser add-on that lets the user spy on anyone logged onto an open wireless network. But now there’s a new add-on available: Blacksheep. Blacksheep tricks Firesheep into announcing itself so users can tell when they’re being spied on.