This is awesome. While SxSW east coast liberal arts are still in "social media apps" mode, Silicon Valley has already turned the page into the next tech frontier, biomedical and digital health and that's *really* really neat. Health, fitness, preventative care: meet your new smartphone. And I love Proteus !!!!

Wearable and ingestible biodata sensors or IEMs this is totally cool stuff: http://www.proteusbiomed.com/technology/

[Reproduced from San Jose Mercury News 03.15.12]
Wireless medical monitors transforming patient care
By Steve Johnson
[email protected]

It's hard to find a better example of how technology is revolutionizing patient care than the tiny edible sensor Proteus Biomedical of Redwood City plans to begin selling this fall in the United Kingdom.

When the grain-of-sand-size sensor is integrated into a drug tablet or capsule and activated by stomach fluid, it signals when the medicine was taken to a patch on the patient's body. Then the patch relays the information along with the person's heart rate and other medical details to a caregiver's phone -- all without a visit to the doctor.
"We're seeing an enormous surge in demand for health services across the globe," said Proteus CEO Andrew Thompson, noting that he plans to offer a similar product in the United States. To meet that need inexpensively, he added, "health care must digitize. It must move into the 21st century."

Some experts predict that in the near future tens of millions of Americans will be tethered to gadgets that will automatically send their vital signs to medical professionals, relatives and concerned friends. The technology already has generated an industry worth well over $1 billion a year. And despite concerns that the data transmitted by patients could overwhelm doctors and be spied on by hackers, the trend is widely expected to transform the relationship between patients and physicians.
Eric Nagel, a 57-year-old semiconductor analyst who lives in Los Gatos, generally takes his blood pressure readings in the morning with a monitor made by iHealth of Mountain View. The device sends the data in an easy-to-understand format to his iPhone and every few weeks, he emails the data to his doctor, who became concerned about his high blood pressure a year ago.

Now that's a really great idea. Let's see the pricing ...

[Reproduced from LiveGoesStrong]

Walmart Disc to Digital: employees will get you digital copies of the DVDs you own
BY: BARB GONZALEZ
MARCH 13, 2012


Bring your DVDs into Walmart and an employee will add the titles to your Vudu streaming movie account.

The Walmart Disc-to-Digital service will be launched on April 16, 2012. In a joint announcement from Walmart and five Hollywood movie studios, they outlined a plan to "bring new life" to your physical DVD and Blu-ray disc collection by making the movies available to stream from online.

You will be able to walk into a Walmart store with your DVDs and have a Walmart employee enter your movie titles into your Vudu cloud movie streaming service account. 

You will no longer be limited to watching your DVDs and Blu-ray discs on a player connected to your TV. The digital movie titles will be available to stream on any device that can play Vudu movies. 

Although details were not released, these movies will also be available from your UltraViolet cloud account.

The best part of this service is that you don't have to figure out how to go into your Vudu account to register the movie. A Walmart employee will do the work for you.


Since today is iPad HD's launch, I thought it would be a good thing to reflect on the status of the consumer electronics industry. Turns out, it's now separated in two categories - Category one: Apple. Category two: hardware manufacturers. And obviously consumers don't care about hardware anymore, except for the 0.01% Geek Plus die hards ;-)

[Reproduced from CNN money]
Three iPads later, other tablets still dead on arrival
By Julianne Pepitone @CNNMoneyTech March 7, 2012: 5:21 AM ET

Apple holds almost 60% of the tablet market with the iPad, while most of its rivals have struggled to make a dent in the market.

NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- Apple unleashed the original iPad two years ago, selling millions and silencing tablet-market naysayers. As Apple prepares to unveil the third version of its tablet on Wednesday, its rivals are still stuck at the starting line.
Competitors initially scoffed at the idea of a tablet -- Google's Eric Schmidt said in 2010 that there was no "difference between a large phone and a tablet." They were left scrambling after Apple sold almost 3.3 million iPads in its first quarter on the market.