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 but I did it.

During mid-September 2007, Mint launched at TC40 (which I attended since I was as a TC intern at the time) and I immediately signed up for an account after seeing their demo.

What’s Mint? In a nutshell, it’s an online money management service that lets you plugin your bank accounts, credits cards and investment accounts and than automatically tracks, categorizes and trends your spending.

Above: Screenshot grabbed from Crunchbase’s Mint profile.

The great thing about Mint is that its almost completely hands-free outside of minimal re-categorizing of expenses like changing an item from the “Grocery” category to the “Restaurant” category.

I also have my Mint account set-up to send me weekly spending reports via email. And, if Mint finds any weird banks fees or low balances they’ll send me an email, too.

If you hate spending time and effort on your personal budget, or if you don’t have a personal budget (yet) but would like to start one, you should definitely give Mint a holler.

Inevitable privacy and security concerns can be answered here.

Oh yeah, see my video question for readers in the comments.

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 “condition or symptom” reference tool. You can enter a condition like “Vitiligo” and Google Health provides a whole package of amazing results.

Here is a quick rundown of all the stuff Google Health’s Vitiligo page provided:

1) Definition
2) Symptoms
3) Treatment
4) Causes
5) Tests & diagnosis
6) Complications
7) When to contact a doctor
8 ) Illustrations, 9) Related news

The related news feature is very helpful in finding relevant news coverage on Vitiligo.

10) Google Scholar results, 11) Related Groups

I like that you can see what the experts have published on Vitiligo or you can go find advice/support/whatever from people who also have Vitiligo (AKA the amateurs).

12) Search trends

This is probably the most Google-y feature on the Vitiligo page. And, it also seems to be highly relevant and insightful.

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 the crowd away with fun, engrossing animations for global health, poverty and economics trends.

The Google founders were at the same TED conference and bought his software after seeing his presentation.

I suggest you jump over to Gapminder world right now and start playing with the chart.

You can change the data input on the y-axis and x-axis to anything you want.

You can select specific countries and compare them. And, you can also push the “play” button and animation bubbles will play the data over time like a movie.

It’s super cool stuff, so be prepared to waste some time playing with it.

If you’re feeling lazy and just want to watch short clips of the software in action than check out the Gapcast videos on Gapminder.

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, according to d.light, about 1.6 billion people around the world depend on kerosene lanterns as their only lighting source.

Where do these 1.6 billion people live? Mostly in rural and urban areas that don’t have regular access to electricity.

Here are some strong reasons for eradicating kerosene lanterns pulled from d.light’s site:

Improved Health
Reduction of indoor air pollution, which causes acute lower respiratory infections, one of the biggest killers among children under 5 in India.

Access to Education
We will offer higher quality and brighter light for children to read by.

Saved Lives
Kerosene causes thousands of fires and burns annually.

More Savings
The average rural household in India spends 7.4% of their income on fuel and lighting, over three times more than is spent on education.

Higher Income
UNDP studies demonstrate that families with access to improved lighting have up to a 30% increase in income levels due to increased productivity at night.

So, what’s their big solution to the kerosene epidemic? It’s simple… LED lights (aka light-emitting diodes).

However, they’re not any old LED lights. Their LED lights have been tested over and over with real families living in the harshest of off-the-grid locations. The d.light team spent months and months perfecting what batteries to use, back-up power sources and different configurations.

They’re goal wasn’t to create only a brighter light but one that was durable and extremely affordable. And, one that could be easily manufactured and distributed all over the world.

Here are some of their light’s features pulled from their site:

Bright Light
Providing 10-20 times more light than a kerosene lantern.

World’s Highest Efficiencies
30-50% more efficient than compact fluorescent lights.

Long Lasting Power
Proprietary circuitry provides a minimum of 5 hours of light at the highest setting and over 200 hours of light at the lowest setting.

Flexible Charging
Charges by portable solar panel. Also, 110V or 220V AC charging available as a backup.

Battery Life Indicator
Indicator light signals level of battery charge, allowing customers to optimize usage.

The d.light was created by Sam Goldman (now CEO) and some Stanford students. After coming up with some prototypes, Sam and some fellow grad students at his MBA program presented their light venture at the 2007 Global Social Venture Competition (GSVB) and won 1st place.

This CNN article has some great additional info on the GSVB competition they won. After the competition, they went on to attract funding from top venture capital firms like Draper Fisher Jurvetson.

I’m hugely impressed with d.light’s effective and singular focus on eradicating one problem. Not only that, they are providing an affordable and highly beneficial solution to people living in underdeveloped areas. Plus, they are running this whole thing as a for-profit business.

Companies like this inspire me. You can read more about d.light at the blog Sam writes over at Social Edge or by perusing d.light’s site.

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 cool 4min sneak peek of the camera:

(Video link: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-241532803911842846)

Sigourney Weaver who acts in Cameron’s next movie Avatar mentioned something that blew my mind during her recent appearance on Late Night with Conan O’brien.

She said that the new camera allows Cameron to capture a scene with actors (wearing special skins) and then go into the studio when everyones left for the day and re-shoot different angles of the same scene without needing the actors.

If that wasn’t enough for you, BusinessWeek reporter Aili McConnon recently had an extremely interesting email exchange with James Cameron about all kinds of futuristic film/technology stuff.

In the interview, he mentioned something very insightful about the future of mobile technology (aka small screens):

“The density of information one can place on a small screen becomes much higher if it’s stacked in three dimensions.”

Hmmm… I’m guessing Steve Jobs already has some sort of 3D display mobile device prototype in his labs.

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 get their first job out of college.

But, that’s not where their innovative Parikrma Model ends. Their model provides both top-notch education in the classroom as well as a 360-degree program out of the classroom, including nutrition, health care and family care.

For instance, they provide their students with breakfast, lunch and a protein shake before going home every day. I’ve actually tried both their lunch and after-school protein shakes and they’re both tasty.

They also provide immunizations and health check-ups to students and provide de-addiction programs and microfinance to parents. These are just a couple examples of their 360-degree program.

Why the out-of-the-classroom program? Because classroom performance and success is affected by outside elements just as much as inside elements. You can read more about the out-of-the-classroom elements here.

The team at Parikrma understand that knowledge and education are the two most important factors in overcoming extreme poverty. That is why Shukla Bose who at one time was India’s highest-paid female CEO dropped her highly lucrative real estate career and focused on creating an education model that would provide a sustainable and scalable model for India’s bad school systems.

How bad are the school systems in India? Here are some quick stats pulled from Parikrma’s site:

Drop out rates are close to 50% by class V and 70% by the time the child reaches class VII. Attendance is as low as 15%. The curriculum is sub-standard. Teachers are poorly trained and teaching methods are outdated.

I got to do some work with Parikrma when I was Bangalore in 2006 and she told me that the unofficial motto for India’s school systems was, “Literacy for masses, education for the classes”.

Parikrma first opened its doors to slum children in 2003. They’re currently operating four schools in Bangalore. Since Parikrma is a nonprofit each of the schools has a sponsor to cover operational costs, including Yahoo!, Adobe and Levi Strauss & Co. You can see more of their various sponsors, like Dell, here.

It didn’t take long before Parikrma’s schools starting getting recognition for educational excellence and national testing performance and their athletic teams start beating local schools at soccer and track.

Their track athletes from their schools just won 13 medals (3 gold, 5 silver and 5 bronze) at the KPMG Inter-School Athletics Meet with more than 4,000 athletes from over 140 mainstream schools.

They’ve decided that operating four schools is optimal while they build out a sustainable and scalable model. In the future, they plan to put Parikrma schools in major cities around India and let them serve as hub-and-spoke models for local public and private schools

Parikrma could easily raise funds to build tons of Parikrma schools all over the place, but they want to focus on partnering with public schools and private schools helping them implement the Parikrma model.

You can check out their site for more info. They love volunteers, so if you have a cool idea give them a holler or check out their volunteer page here.

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 watch the demo video below for more info.

Near the 2:30min mark the guy demo-ing the ‘telepathic’ neckband says that future versions will allow you to augment your thoughts with info from the Internet before you speak them out loud. What?!

(YouTube video link)

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 have my blood pressure checked, quickly explain what brings me in and then wait for my doctor to make his/her appearance.

When the doctor comes in he/she always smiles at me and asks me what brings me while he/she reads what the nurse wrote about what brings me in.

I always give my doctor a more in-depth explanation of what brings me in than what I just told the nurse (obviously).

And, while I’m explaining my current “random medical thing” to my doctor, he/she is usually browsing over my past medical records while simultaneously listening to my explanation. My doctor will sometimes reference my current “random medical thing” with something from my past medical records.

I have never seen my medical records!

In the past, my doctor would flip through a manila folder and browse his/her organized notes. Recently, they switched over to keeping my medical records on the computer. As I explain my “random medical thing” my doctor enters info into the computer.

Note: I just switched over to Kaiser Permanente and have no idea what system they use for medical records. You can view my new doctor’s KP profile here.

My recent switch to Kaiser Permanente (just graduated, moved off my parent’s insurance) got me thinking about what will happen to my medical records at my old doctor’s office.

Here are some questions I have about my medical records:

Do they follow me to my new doctor? How are they transferred?

Does my new doctor get all the unique and interesting notes my old doctor wrote down or entered into the computer?

Also, I never really thought about this but can I look at them too?

I never really thought to ask my old doctor to hand over that manila folder so I could take a look. I would really like to see all the notes and random medical things that have been recorded since I was a little baby.

I can remember some big things I went to the doctor for but I can’t remember specific virus names or that one oddly named antibiotic that I used for three weeks ten years ago.

I really want to view my medical records!

Hopefully in the near future I will be able to look at my medical records in a separate browser tab as I write blog posts. That is going to be awesome.

Google Health looks like it’s trying to help me do this. Check out Google CEO Eric Schmidt’s Google Health presentation at HIMSS last week:

See the video on YouTube.

Also, Jay Parkinson MD just launched hello health and it looks amazing.

Jay on hello health:

“hello health is the consumer brand of healthcare delivery powered by the Myca platform. It’s Geek Squad with doctors and a Netflix-priced monthly membership subscription fee — it is a branded healthcare “experience” that mixes “concierge service for all,” with house/office calls and web visits via email, IM, video chat, and text messaging. It’s Fed Ex, Apple, Whole Foods, Amazon, Toyota, Fresh Direct, and Geek Squad all applied to healthcare delivery.”

Jay and Myca created an amazing visual interface to display medical records. You can see the visual interface they created in this video.

UPDATE: Kaiser Permanente has a My Health Manager that let’s you view your medical records:

But, my medical records from my old doctor don’t transfer (?!):

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, says that that the service is going to focus on the Asia-Pacific region near Japan first. The project’s other partner is Mitsubishi Heavy Industries (very appropriate name).

It looks like the project plans to bring the technology to remote areas at low costs. JAXA said (via CNN),

“Among other uses, this will make possible great advances in telemedicine, which will bring high-quality medical treatment to remote areas, and in distance education, connecting students and teachers separated by great distances”

This is so cool. If it’s successful, it could transform both my life and rural farmers in India making under $2 per day.

Think about this: Once they invest in the overhead of developing, building, launching and routinely maintaining the satellite, every new subscriber past the financial break-even point is just extra. This will allow them to provide high-speed Internet to places that might have not been viable to do so in the past.

Update: Tom Evslin over at Fractals of Change posted a great write-up about the potential ‘latency’ issues with Internet satellites.

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 day.

Another email highlighted the lack of a working blood bank refrigerator in the hospital she worked. You can read excerpts from both these emails here.

In later emails, she told me that the hospital had tried to run one before but the stable electricity issues were a big problem. She also said the hospital told her that back-up power sources (i.e. generators) were too expensive. Plus, the hospital didn’t have extra staff to keep one running properly.

Bottomline: Blood bank refrigerators are too expensive for poor rural hospitals like the one my sister worked at.

When I received the email about the blood bank issue I immediately researched the Internet for affordable blood bank refrigerators that were hearty enough for “gray” electricity and could run for long lengths of time on alternative power sources (like generators etc) while keeping running costs low.

You can’t just go to Amazon and search for one with those specifications.

If you Google “blood bank refrigerators” you come up with options like this:

Helmer, Inc. – i.Series iB245 Blood Bank Refrigerator

My guess is that this model might have a hard time operating at the hospital my sister was at.

I’m going to continue my hunt for a blood bank refrigerator that works well in very rural areas with unstable electricity. It also needs to be very affordable and have low running costs.

Let me know if you find one before I do.