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08.31.2004

Talking Street Cell Phone Walking Tours

Posted by Mia    Category: current affairs
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08.31.2004

Father of the Pride

NBC kicks off the new fall season tonight with Father of the Pride, starring a computer animated Siegfried and Roy (but with other people doing their famous voices) John Goodman's voice (Larry the lion) and Matt Lauer playing himself (well in computer generated form). Sounds genius, I know, but Tom Shales hated it. It's "loosely" based on Siegfried and Roy's Vegas magic act only with Matt Lauer. Yeah, I can't wait.
It airs tonight at 9 pm EST on NBC and the season premiere of Scrubs with guest star RollerGirl, follows.

Posted by Mia    Category: current affairs
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08.31.2004

La Leash Ear Bud

The La Leash with ear bud lets you carry your phone in style, and talk at the same time with an integrated ear piece/microphone. The clasp is sterling silver and the adjustable leather lanyard comes in bone, orange, or pink. It's $125, or you can pick up the original, earbud-less La Leash for $85.
Available online at Flight 001.

Posted by Mia    Category: accessories
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08.31.2004

A Small Small World

It's hard to be a celebrity in this world, what with all the travel to glamorous locales like St. Moritz, Cannes, and Ibiza. It probably gets very lonely. Where could a supermodel find a friend in a city she's never been to before? Supposedly, on aSmallWorld, an invitation only social networking site for the rich and fabulous. It's so exclusive you can't even click on the links to see if it's for real.

We list the most popular restaurants, hotels, and night clubs in over 40 major cities, summer and winter resorts and we keep track of major events, parties, exhibitions, film and music festivals and sporting events such as motor racing, tennis, sailing, golf, and others.

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08.30.2004

Interactive Music Box

Jin-Yo Mok's and Gicheol Lee's Music Box, an interactive music installation that uses LEDs instead of the regular music box pins, lets users draw an image on a monitor, which will then be re-created on the music box when the crank is turned. All the data is saved so previous users' pictures can be played again. There are videos available on the site, and watching the box play/light "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star" is mesmerizing. The online version (click on "Play_Online") isn't quite the same visually, obviously but I can't stop playing with it. It seems impossible to play something that doesn't sound whimsical and pretty. If you create a masterpiece, be sure to save it so that others can enjoy it too.
Music Box is featured in the Whitney Artport.

Posted by Mia    Category: design
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08.30.2004

Get Ready for Political Spam

Advocacy, oops @dvocacy Inc., is utilizing voter registration databases cross-referenced with other email databases to create "targeted specific voter populations" to sell to political candidates and lobbyists. @dvocacy Inc., led by CEO Roger Alan Stone, can easily create a list of young female Democrats who like to catalog shop, for instance, and sell it to the highest bidder. This is wonderful news, as if it weren't already hard enough to convince people to register to vote.

Business has been brisk. Stone said he has 60 clients, including 20 members of the U.S. House of Representatives, 15 candidates for Congress, nine state or local ballot initiatives and a dozen interest groups including the Union of Concerned Scientists and the Council for a Livable World. "We are adding at least 10 new clients a week and the pace is growing rapidly," he said.

From the Washington Post.

Posted by Mia    Category: current affairs
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08.30.2004

MData: PDAs for Hospitals

While we seem to hear about new advances in medicine every day (heard about the jaw grown in a back muscle?), the stories that tend to stick with us are the ones about medical errors like the one that caused a man in Florida to lose the wrong leg in an amputation. While horrifying accidents like that one are rare, medical errors occur regularly, often due to simple human error. In an era where almost everything is computerized, most hospitals still rely heavily on paper records. Now at last some hospitals are making the move into the digital age. MData,Nc by MercuryMD is a PDA-based system for the healthcare profession that centralizes patient data and makes the sharing of updated clinical information by doctors, nurses, pharmacists, and other hospital staff a lot easier. The Virginia Hospital Center, in Arlington, Virginia, already on the forefront of digital record keeping, is one of the very first hospitals to implement the MData sytem. I asked Steven Zimmett, MD (VHC Pulmonary Critical Care and Internal Medicine) a few questions about the rollout.
MK: How has MData affected the daily routine of patient care? Is it time-saving?
Dr. Zimmett: MercuryMD provides a snapshot of our patients,Aeo information in a very mobile format. Yes, MercuryMD is a time-saver. I am able to answer my patients,Aeo questions with the information at my fingertips on my PDA, e.g., lab work, medications, etc. without having to return to the nursing station computer terminals. It is really the mobility of having information at the patient,Aeos bedside that saves time.,Aeu
MK: Is the technology easy to use? Was the transition from paper charts to MData a difficult one?
Dr. Zimmett: Virginia Hospital Center has been on the forefront of electronic data management for many years and MercuryMD just takes us to a new level.Yes, the MercuryMD system is very easy to use.
MK: How is the data transmitted from doctor to pharmacist to technician, etc... Is it wireless?
Dr. Zimmett: To clarify, we are not transmitting original information but rather MercuryMD gives us mobility with our current information system. Yes, we have wireless capability, as well as IR (infrared) sync stations for physicians whose PDAs/handhelds do not have a wireless capability.
MK: Would you recommend implementation nationwide, any precautions?
Dr. Zimmett: MData is a great way to have your patient,Aeos vital information at your fingertips while you are on-the-go; it typically saves 3-5 min/patient during rounding. That frequently adds up to 1-2hrs/day for our clinicians. That,Aeos time that could be spent in the office, and any time a Physician can see more patients or spend more time with the patients they have benefits everyone. Plus, MercuryMD is very responsive to end user requests and is always looking for more ways to utilize handheld technology to save clinicians,Aeo time.
Since MData reflects the level of security a hospital employs, the only caveat to implementing this nationwide is for hospitals to make sure their network is as secure and HIPPA compliant as possible. This is true whether they use MData or not.
MK: How have patients reacted to MData?
Dr. Zimmett: Patients have reacted positively to physicians spending more time at their bedside and the fact that physicians can give patients answers right away makes them happy.
Thank you, Dr. Zimmer and Jamie Meredith.

Posted by Mia    Category: current affairs
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08.29.2004

E-ZPass Checkout by Avery

If Avery has its way, someday pretty soon everything you shop for will have "smart" labels with RFID (radio frequency identification) so you won't have to check out, you'll just whiz by like the cars in the E-Z Pass lane.
RFID is all the rage; there's a rice grain-sized chip inside of Mexico's Attorney General Rafael Macedo de la Concha. Expect them soon to be available for tagging everything and everyone. Avery is aggressively pursuing this emerging market and expects to spend more than $20 million on research this year alone.
RFID already has some fierce opponents, including those who fear that people's privacy will be encroached or that hackers will make the technology unsafe. Very real concerns, of course, and I wouldn't be too keen to get myself injected with a chip, but I think an easy shopping experience without dealing with a checkout queue might well be worth a box of macaroni that knows who I am.
Read more in the LA Times (free subscription required.)

Posted by Mia    Category: current affairs
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08.29.2004

Questions about High Tech Pet Care

Mary Battiata wrote a great, thought-provoking article in today's Washington Post Magazine about the ethical issues that have come up now that high tech healthcare is available for pets. While many of these new procedures are cost prohibitive for most families, people who have gone to extreme measures to save the lives of their companion animals have been ridiculed and even threatened because of their devotion. Battiata had to face some of these questions herself recently when her beloved dog Bear became ill and had surgery in his fourteenth year.
Battiata found people who would go to any lengths to save their pets, including some who had to forego their own medical treatments in order to pay for their animal's vet bills. One cat owner whose cat received a kidney transplant received hate mail when the surgery was reported on the news. Apparently those people were appalled that anyone would spend more than $20,000 on life-saving surgery for a cat. I wonder if those same people would send threatening letters to neighbors who bought $100,00 Hummers or other luxury items.
I know these are questions that can't be easily or summarily answered but I know that my dogs are part of my family and it's hard for me to understand how anyone could see their pets as "just animals".
On a happy note, Battiata's research revealed that from 1987-2000, the average life span of a dog or a cat in the US went up about a third. There's even a new equation to find out how many human years are equivalent to one year of a dog's life. You can find out your dog's new human age with this Dog Years Calculator. It's comforting, my dogs just got 11 years younger.

Posted by Mia    Category: pets
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08.29.2004

Colgate MaxFresh with Breath Strips

No one needs to tell me that I'm a little (maybe more than a little) too concerned with oral hygiene and I've already stated my excitement over Colgate MaxFresh toothpaste but after seeing this picture, how can anyone not be excited? I hope this starts a whole new trend of miniaturizing items to embed inside of toothpaste, like a toothpaste with lots of little toothbrushes inside so you can just squeeze the paste right into your mouth and chew.

Posted by Mia    Category: body
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