Thursday: July 2, 2009
- Digitizing health records may ultimately save billions of dollars.
Analysts say an estimated $700 billion a year is wasted on unnecessary tests and mistakes that a computerized system could help avoid. Still, hospitals had been reluctant to change due to the up front costs. But industry professionals say the stimulus plan incentives are motivational factors.
Tuesday: May 18, 2010
- Brand new computer algorithm actually capable of detecting sarcasm.
...the team scanned 66,000 Amazon.com product reviews, with three different human annotators tagging sentences for sarcasm. The team then identified certain sarcastic patterns that emerged in the reviews and created a classification algorithm that puts each statement into a sarcastic class.
Tuesday: May 11, 2010
- Experts figure out that eating more nuts is key to lowering your cholesterol.
It is not yet clear why nuts have this effect, although one suggestion is that it is down to the plant sterols they contain, which are thought to interfere with cholesterol absorption. Lead researcher Joan Sabate said increasing nut consumption as part of a healthy diet should be recommended.
Monday: April 26, 2010
- Sony ceases production of floppy disks. In other news, Sony was still making floppy disks.
Most other floppy disk manufacturers had long since pulled out of the market, and Sony itself has already ceased sales to most of its overseas markets. With the release of the iMac in 1998, Apple was the first computer maker to take the plunge and eliminate the floppy completely.
Thursday: April 15, 2010
- Entire Twitter archive to be included in Library of Congress digital assets collection.
The addition of Twitter into the organization's offerings could foster an enormous amount of academic research. From a new kind of historical record to an unprecedented opportunity for discovering patterns of social interaction, this is big.
Monday: April 12, 2010
- Google decides to acquire Plink, a visual search company.
The four month-old start-up provided visual search results based on artwork photography submitted to their PlinkArt application on your Android handset. The principle is simple: take a shot of a painting, run it through the Plink art database and get the details on the artwork and its author.
- Nine little known secrets to living past the ripe old age of ninety.
You don’t need hours of unbroken sleep as you age, but you do need a solid seven to nine hours of sleep when you get older. So if you do it a little bit at a time, napping in the afternoons, and getting sleep at night (even if it is disjointed) it can help you live longer.
Friday: April 9, 2010
- Always wondered what America's top fifty franchises are? Wonder no more.
Wow, look at all those orange slices. If you're thinking that McDonald's is the top American franchise, your close - but try again. I'll give you a hint: their best-selling product rhymes with Shmurpee.
Tuesday: April 6, 2010
- Blu-ray discs will soon be capable of holding a whopping 128 gigabytes.
The new BDXL specification describes High Capacity Recordable and Rewritable discs which will write up to 128GB of content on each disc. These are write-once capacities, with the rewritable discs allowing for 100GB of storage.
- A collection of three handy SQL Server cheat sheets just for you.
Do you have the the honor, no privilege, of working with SQL Server implementations for the better part of your work day? If you answered yes, then this post should come very handy. Print em up, tape to wall, continue on with your query, execute and enjoy.
Tuesday: March 30, 2010
- New world record for largest group of water skiers claimed over in Australia.
It took a group of 114 water skiers to break the previous record of 100 water skiers all of which were towed by a single boat for the distance of one nautical mile. Apparently the group in question had been trying to break the previous record for quite some time. Congrats.