911 Medical ID

Have you ever thought about how you would relay important medical information to first responders if you were in an accident or emergency alone and unable to communicate? Do you ever get tired of filling out pages of medical forms at the doctor’s office? After three years of development, the new 911 Medical ID™ may be the answer to your concerns and frustrations.

The 911 Medical ID™ is the world’s thinnest USB medical information storage device, measuring two millimeters in thickness. Its size resembles a credit card, and fits into your wallet just the same. When inserted into the USB port of a computer, pre-loaded software launches and walks the user through the process of entering medical information including: doctors, prescriptions, insurance, medical tests, medical history, allergies and any other relevant information. The card is password protected to maintain privacy, and the ability to back up this information onto a secure website is also offered at no charge.

This new concept not only saves time by eliminating medical office paper work, but can potentially save lives.

Best Buy Partners With CinemaNow

One of the nation's biggest sellers of DVDs is making a leap into movie downloading.

Best Buy recently announced its partnership with online video provider, CinemaNow, in a deal that will stream first-run DVDs directly to consumers. CinemaNow was one of the earliest online movie suppliers, with a library of over 20,000 titles, mostly consisting of new releases. Best Buy’s agreement will allow customers to buy or rent from CinemaNow’s library of content on connected consumer electronics sold through Best Buy retail stores. This movie downloading service will be integrated into most internet-connected electronics sold at the store.

Essentially, this is the idea: you must pay once for a DVD, then you are able to play it on any connected device, be it a television, Blu-ray player, PC, or smartphone. Ultimately, this service will also serve as a means to leverage digital copies to bridge the physical and digital stream worlds. Facing an industry-wide decline in sales of physical media such as DVDs and CDs, Best Buy has been making an aggressive push into digital delivery. The partnership with CinemaNow, which is expected to launch late this year or in early 2010, marks a companion move in online movies and comes at a time when DVD sales are down in comparison to previous years.

Legal movie downloads have been available for about a decade, but the business has been impeded by high prices and limitations on availability and consumers' ability to play video on different devices. Best Buy’s top priority is to make the distribution of online movies simpler for the consumer, allowing them to play movies on multiple devices and eliminating some of the limitations that exist with other companies in the market.

Considering how quickly the pace has picked up in the race to media-free media, this is a good move by Best Buy to acquire a streaming media company - especially in a down economy when acquisitions are a winning strategy.

Cray Jaguar Leads as the World’s Fastest Supercomputer

Cray has recently surpassed IBM and has obtained the lead position on the Top500 Supercomputer chip-measuring contest. The XT5 supercomputer, better known as Jaguar, has six-core Opteron processors and has climbed the mountain of 2.3 petaflop per second. A petaflop is a measure of a computer's processing speed. It is expressed as one thousand trillion floating point operations per second. This calculation has exceeded the petaflop per second threshold of 1.042 petaflops.

Hello again, Moore's Law!

3D Theater Technology Reaches the Home Front

Do you remember the buzz that stirred when 3D entertainment hit the movie theaters? Well technology has come a long way since then, and 3D technologies are making their way to your home theater. The traditional anaglyph red and blue glasses from the past are being replaced with newer technologies, and companies like Sony, Panasonic, and Samsung are bringing 3D to the comfort of your home.

Anaglyph images were, until recently, the most popular method of presenting 3D, largely because of the ease of their production, and also due to the fact that this was the first 3D technology widely adopted by the Hollywood film industry. Sony has displayed a prototype that uses standard Real D polarized glasses for viewing. The Real D Method uses a single projector that alternately projects left-eye and right-eye images and then uses a method to circularly polarize the viewing using clockwise polarization for the right-eye and counter-clockwise polarization for the left-eye. The polarized lens eyeglasses separate the images for the viewer. Both Panasonic and Samsung have decided on a different approach, using the LCD shutter glass method. This method uses alternating left-eye, right-eye images, but the LCD shutter glasses lens alternately go from opaque to transparent many times per second in synchronization with the image being displayed. The most interesting part about the use of shutter technology is that is should theoretically work on any television with a 120 Hz refresh rate with the use of an external 3D controller.

While Sony and Samsung have no immediate plans for the production of a real product, Panasonic is in the process of developing a product that will reach the market.

Well I would imagine that, although the movie industry will certainly benefit from this new possibility for enhancing the experience, this technology will really be a huge player in the gaming circuit. Gaming applications for this are nearly endless, and it could make new kinds of gaming scenarios possible. Without the familiar blue and red lenses, some people may mistake the new types of 3D glasses for just really unfashionable sunglasses, so make sure you leave them at home.

Airports Screen for Body Signals

Over the past several years, airport security has intensified due to the nation’s circumstances. The days of being able to walk through security checkpoints without being stripped of shoes and jackets are no longer present. However, they could potentially return if an experimental program funded by Homeland Security proves to be effective. The project is known as the Future Attribute Screening Technology.

The idea of the project is that sensors and cameras located at security points would measure natural signals coming from passenger’s body as they pass through. These signals include breathing, heart rate, eye movement, body temperature, and fidgeting. According to project manager, Robert Burns, the measurement of these signals combined is able to indicate one’s intent to do harm. He stated that there has been prior extensive research that suggests that one’s natural physical reactions are tied into mental and emotional state.

The machines being tested include an eye tracker, a thermal imaging device, a fidgeting monitor, and two machines that test heart rate and respiratory rates. Screeners will be keeping an eye out for elevated levels as well as lack of signals, which are both significant signs that there may be an issue that needs handling. Once there is cause for concern, security personnel will send those individuals for secondary screening.

There has been some criticism of the project, bringing up the issues of privacy and workability. Some critics have said that it is an invasion of privacy, and others believe it is impossible to carry this out effectively. The project manager has disputed this criticism and hopes to have the project ready for field testing in 2011.

This is a really fascinating technology, however, I just don't know how much it can be relied on for accuracy. Personally, I do quite a lot of fast breathing, fidgeting, and have an elevated body temperature when in an airport because I'm terrified of flying. It brings up some of the same arguments for and against polygraph machines - they can easily be tricked by a person who trains controlling their reactions and they can easily show false positives. I'm not sure that this tool will be effective enough to justify its market price.