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eHealth

Doctors in Massachusetts will be able to use a database called eHealth to access patients' records from any hospital or clinic within the state, an article from USATODAY said. The insurance company Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts is funding $50 million towards the project. This project although will begin as a pilot program wil save hospitals and doctors and the state a lot of time and money. Currently, all patient records are in paper and takes a long time to sort and update and are very costly. Information technology has been lagging in the medicine industry due to lack of funding but with the funding from the insurance company, Massachusetts may be the first state to have a state-wide database for patients' medical records.

'Blog' - most popular word

An article from USA TODAY said that the word 'blog' is now the most popular search word in the Merriam-Webster online dictionary. Last year, the word was 'democracy.' This shows that people are getting more interested into Web logs and want to learn more about blogs and their functions. The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines a blog as "a Web site that contains an online personal journal with reflections, comments, and often hyperlinks provided by the writer."

Microsoft and blogging

Microsoft is coming out with a test version called MSN spaces which is a new tool that lets people create Web journals as mentioned in this article. This service will be free to people with Microsoft Hotmail accounts and/or MSN Messenger accounts. Although Microsoft is a little late in introducing a new tool for blogging (Microsoft's number one rival AOL introduced their blogging tool during mid 2003), Microsoft believes that it is not too late because "blogging is only just catching on with mainstream users."

Microsofts strategy is to closely integrate MSN Spaces with the MSN Messenger and Hotmail programs. The idea is that people can be alerted through their messenger if a friend or a visitor updates their blog or writes a comment in theirs. Bloggers can limit access of their blogs to limited friends by using the Passport sign in to log in to view certain blogs. The MSN Spaces can be updated not only through the web but also through email or even cell phone.

The final version of MSN Spaces is due to be out by next June. Although for now, MSN Spaces are free, Microsoft is not ruling out the idea of creating a "paid, premium blog service" in  the future.

10X10

Having nothing to do, I stumbled into a site called 10X10 (www.tenbyten.org). This site shows 100 pictures of 100 news that is going on at that moment. The images are ranked in order (from left to right) of importance for that hour. On the right, there are 100 words that corresponds to the 100 pictures. When one of the 100 pictures or words are selected, the headlines of the news is shown and when the headlines are selected, the full article can be read about the news.

10X10 currently scans the RSS feeds from several international news sources. Then 10X10 uses an elaborate process where the news articles in RSS feeds are scanned then the most important words of the articles are drawned out. The 100 most importants words and their pictures are selected and is displayed in a grid of 100 images.

This I thought was a very creative way to use RSS feeds that are used in most sites nowadays. This site differentiated itself by using the picture grid although it basically does the same thing as any other news site that uses RSS feeds. This site made me realize that opportunities in the tech industry is never ending, and the powerful effects of RSS in the world today. Without RSS, there would be no site like 10X10 today.