Innovative Solutions
Mint Makes My Personal Budgeting Hands Free, Happy
I'm a personal budget nerd.
I regularly check my online Bank of America account, keep Excel spreadsheets tracking all kinds of various things and use personal budget software to track and record all my receipts, payments and expenses.
Pre-September 2007 I used Quicken as my go-to personal budget software. Using Quicken was painful and tedious [...]
Google Health is a Phenomenally Useful Tool for Armchair Doctors
Google Health officially launched today and I couldn't help but create a profile and see what I could do. In under 5 minutes, I linked my Longs Drugs account to my profile, added my doctor to my profile and added some pertinent personal details.
Right now, the feature that impresses me the most is the [...]
Gapminder: A Playground for Global Data Trends
Presentations of global data trends sound boring, right? Not so when it involves Hans Rosling and his Trendalyzer software.
Trust me. I just spent 30min messing around with Trendalyzer over on Gapminder.org.
I stumbled across Hans' Trendalyzer after watching this video of his amazing presentation at TED in March 2007. In the presentation, he blew [...]
d.light is a Bright Solution
d.light design's goal is to make kerosene lanterns extinct as soon as possible. Why do they want to do this? They think they have a lighting solution that provides a safer, brighter and more affordable light to the widely-used kerosene lantern.
You're probably saying to yourself, "But, I don't own a kerosene lantern". You're right. But, [...]
Video: James Cameron’s Stereoscopic 3D Camera
There wasn't a camera on the market that could do what director James Cameron wanted to do. So, he invented his own camera.
How badass is that?
I'm not going to try and describe how it works in detail. In short, his camera acts like a set of human eyeballs.
Watch the video below for a [...]
Parikrma: 360-Degree Education Model for Poverty Alleviation
Shukla Bose and her team are trying to accomplish big things in India.
They are tackling poverty in India by providing extremely impoverished children top-notch education at no cost. Parikrma accepts slum children into their schools whose parents make less than $30 per month and provides them with an education from age 5 until they [...]
Thought-to-Speech Technology is Freaking Me Out
Ambient Corp is developing a neckband called the Audeo that reads nerve signals in your neck so you don't actually have to speak out loud to have a phone conversation. All you have to do is think about voicing words to have a phone conversation.
WTF, right?!
You really need to read this New Scientist article and [...]
I’ve Never Viewed My Medical Records. Have You Seen Yours?
All through my childhood, teen years and, now, young adult years I've gone to my doctor's office for yearly checkups, physicals and random things that come up now and then (i.e. broken bones, viruses).
Every time I visit my doctor I wait in the waiting room, get called back by a nurse, get weighed and [...]
Japan Launches Hi-Speed Internet Satellite
OMG! According to AP, if it works the Internet satellite "Kizuna" should bring Internet connections to global subscribers at speeds of 1.2 gigabytes per second.
Whoa! On a good day, my high-speed Internet service provided by Comcast can barely do 2.5 million bytes per second.
Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), one of the project's partners, [...]
Hunting for a Blood Bank Refrigerator
My sister was an intern nurse at a rural hospital in Nigeria this past summer. She sent us plenty of action-packed emails about her adventures, observations and experiences.
One email she sent us highlighted the alarming frequency of auto accidents she witnessed both on the road and in the surgery room at all hours of the [...]
