Groupon general counsel David Schellhase said the company is developing technology that will track customers' location, even if they don't have a Groupon app open on their phones, according to an August 10 letter to the co-chairmen of the House Bi-Partisan Privacy Caucus: Joe Barton, a Texas Republican, and Edward Markey, a Massachusetts Democrat.
Why are is the company building that technology? Because its what customers want. Further, says the company, it will require explicit "opt-in" which please Rep Markey.
- Reuters
Foursquare now lets you check in to events - games, concerts, movies... I for one am finding checking in way off the radar of late. Oh, and presdient Obama is now on Foursquare (another indication it's "out"?)
- GigaOm
So, now that checking in is out (at least in my book) the Bing Team has an app for setting up a meetup: "We're in." It allows you to make the invitation to a group, then track everyone via status updates as they head to it (or bail out). For now it's a Windows Phone app and website, but the plan is to make it avaiable on other platforms.
- Washington Post, Bing Blog
by Adena Schutzberg on 08/19 at 05:06 AM |
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Research reported in the International Journal of Health Geographics 2011, 10:43 explored the relationship between access to food outlets (convenience stores, grocery stores, and fast food) and BMI in elder Japanese citizens.
Results: In contrast to previous reports, we found that better access to supermarkets was related to higher BMI. Better access to fast food outlets or convenience stores was also associated with higher BMI, but only among those living alone.
The logistic regression analysis, using categorized BMI, showed that the access to supermarkets was only related to being overweight or obese, but not related to being underweight.
Conclusions: Our findings provide mixed support for the types of food environment measures previously used in western settings. Importantly, our results suggest the need to develop culture-specific approaches to characterizing neighborhood contexts when hypotheses are extrapolated across national borders.
- 7th Space
Is this health related? The paper is titled "Web GIS in practice X: a Microsoft Kinect natural user interface for Google Earth navigation" and was published in the Intl Journal of Health Geographics. It details different ways to link a Kinect to drive software included Google Earth. That's not news nor exactly medically related. What is interesting in the paper (open access, pdf) is how this sort of interface may be useful in medical situations - especially those that allow the surgeon to control a medical device without touching button/touchscreen or keyboard.
- 7th Space
In connection with Cord Blood Awareness month, Parent's Guide to Cord Blood Foundation, the leading online resource educating parents about their cord blood storage options, has announced the first in a series of new tools and resources being made available to parents on its revised website: the nation's first searchable map of cord blood donation sites throughout the U.S.
- press release
by Adena Schutzberg on 07/28 at 03:00 AM |
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Narrow your search further:
bmi,
cord blood,
grocery stores,
health,
japan,
kinect,
location map,
microsoft,
obesity,
surgery,
user interface
Gigwalk is a mobile crowdsouring tool available in eight U.S. cities. Those with work to be done (take a picture of a menu, confirm a placemat is in use in a specific restaurant, etc.) offer it up for a worker who gets paid a fee to complete the job or "gig." Microsoft will use the service to collect images to include alongside its Bing Maps results.
- VentureBeat
by Adena Schutzberg on 07/20 at 03:00 AM |
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Lake Charles, Louisiana-based Transcenic said in court documents that Google's Streetview and Google Earth and Microsoft's Streetside infringe its technology which covers systems for capturing and navigating within panoramic images.
AOL's MapQuest is also named. The patent 7,050,102 is titled “Spatial referenced photographic system with navigation arrangement.” Filed 11/28/2000 & Granted 5/23/2006.
- Reuters
by Adena Schutzberg on 07/06 at 02:52 AM |
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Microsoft PR writes:
Today, with the Bing Maps World Tour application people can begin to get a taste of what’s to come with Bing Maps imagery. The World Tour app currently reaches a grand total of 153 locations and features new, outstanding high-resolution aerial imagery that has been captured and published as part of the Bing Maps Global Ortho program.Launched in the spring of 2010, the Global Ortho program is an ambitious mapping project that aims to provide www.bing.com/maps with 30cm (1 foot) aerial blanket coverage of (initially) the continental United States and Western Europe. Through the Global Ortho program, Bing is working to provide people with the same brilliance, resolution and accuracy no matter what aerial image they’re looking at.
Check out this video to see stunning examples of the imagery being collected and to learn more about key members of the team, and read more about the updates and Global Ortho project on the Bing blog.
Microsoft produced this video about the Global Ortho Program that we featured in April of this year.
by Adena Schutzberg on 06/27 at 01:13 PM |
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