For enrolling in health benefits (not Obamacare as it happens), managing my bank statement, etc, I use Internet Explorer. Not because I trust Microsoft, but because I know the provider is going to focus on making their application work correctly with IE. I don't want some subtle discrepancy in browser behavior to route my transaction to underspace. I don't care if it is Microsoft who is not following the standard, they are the de facto standard for most of these services.

The first thing is to figure out what is the communication goals of colleagues.
- Is the boss concerned about status and schedule? Then do go into technical detail, but provide enough information to give confidence in your response.
- Are you being asked to provide a lot of directions and solutions from colleagues or subordinates? Then you can ask for opinions and suggestion before providing other feedback. Once people realize that they should think before asking, you will get a lot less frivolous questions.
- Are you being asked for technical detail? Figure out what kind of information would be helpful for you. Bear in mind some people may want more or less because of experience level or personal style.

Second, don't be too concerned about "needless conversation". Communication is a key to any organization as well as social harmony.

Third, look for, and implement, more formalized systems of information sharing. The bigger the company and the project the more communication is needed. The conversations requirements will become exponential if it is not systematized. A simple example are kanbans in an agile development process. When a story is put into the "ready for development" all the coders know they can take up the story and that the story description and test criteria are written. There is no asking around about what to do next and fewer questions about what needs to get done. Obviously no system is perfect, and conversation will still be required. However, ready access to the information each person needs for the job will reduce lots of unnecessary conversation. There will be less conversation used just to gather information and fewer discussions pointlessly trying to figure out why critical information was not communicated. Conversation can then be more focused on decision making, design, etc which will be a better use of everyone's time.

Denial: "You want to go to Bing! right?"
Anger: "Don't you aim those fingers at my keyboard!"
Bargaining: "You wouldn't want me to send those photos to your entire contact list would you? Besides, I can get you free HBO..."
Depression: "Always with the three fingers. Doesn't anyone appreciate any my hard work and flexibility? No, all anyone can remember is the blue screen, no matter how long its been since they seen one. Do they treat apple like this? 'oh, that dead mac face takes me back..' and 'look how pretty that apple is, ooh and it talks too'"
Acceptance: "Yeah, I know. Do you want to boot into safe mode?"

There is some evidence that is does actually relate to the bad whether. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/12/121204162125.htm

It seems to me there is information there. A tiny particle blurs to 2 um. Hence it clear that you can't meaningfully distinguish between to particles less then roughly 1 um. http://www.cambridgeincolour.com/tutorials/diffraction-photography.htm. However, if the particles are 4 um apart I can definitely distinguish them. I am sure I can do this because if I look at the image present, the dot is blurred, meaning there are multiple pixel for the single spot. Sure it is possible the that the image is super zoomed up and what we are seeing is software smoothing of a single pixel or some kind of compression algorithm creating a false sense of resolution. To my eye this does not seem to be the case [yes, very subjective/speculative statement here]. Phone cameras are now boasting 41 MPixel chips http://www.nokia.com/us-en/phones/phone/lumia1020/specifications/ This is a lot higher spacial resolution than most scientific cameras used with fluorescent microscopes so it is not far fetched to expect camera resolution is not the limiting factor. So yes, there is a little bit of assumption that the people who built this thing knew a little bit about what they are doing and are purely "faking" it. With that in mind the basis for my claims is there in the article.

Of course the other post has plenty of hand waving. The only point of that is that there are reasons why the particular implementation may not be stupid, not that I know all the details of what was done.

It certainly is a microscope. It can build up an image out of those dots. The real question is what is the true resolution and are there meaningful applications for that resolution. Plenty of interesting things can be found without high resolution, so there needs to value provide the resolution. Those tiny dots are blurring to about 2 um. Individual cells are roughly 4 to 8 um range. So you can probably spot individual cells. This is a lot more valuable with second image, either transmitted light or a second fluorescent wavelength. With two images you can do % of cells of a certain type. For example, percent of live cells, percent of cells with a specific protein etc. You can probably get reasonable number just by coverage areas even if the cells are not separable. What you can do with a single wavelength is more limited. You can get more accurate counts, Maybe you can develop a two stage assay: Stain for article of interest, Take a picture. Stain for all cells. Now you have %.

It is not so stupid as it sounds. Yes, they basically attached a fluorescent microscope. However, there was some engineering involved and there area some benefits over a web cam.
- Built in capabilities.
      - connectivity allowing for remote diagnoses, software upgrades etc
      - phone providing very large range of travel and maintaining data access
      - storage of image can be linked with other patient data
      - OS for automatic analysis, image enhancement etc
      - high quality monitor with build in zoom function
- Versatility. Other aspects of the phone can be used for other apps such as making phone call, looking up research or related material, GPS
- Ubiquity. Smart phones are showing up all over the place,
        - third world countries are skipping wired and going directly to wireless
        - used equipment is available cheaply and deliver significant bang for the buck because the original purchase was defrayed by data plan
- Camera quality. Phone camera quality has become quite good.
- Engineering the fluorescent microscope to the form factor is not trivial.
All that said, staining is probably a pretty big hurdle for field diagnostics. On the other hand a mobile clinic might have more capabilities. The device would not need to be used by one doctor making a house call..