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Submission + - A wheelchair - Historical note (wheelchairrampguide.org)

Submitted by
Anonymous Coward
Anonymous Coward writes: "As a means of transportation for people unable to move, the wheelchair was first mentioned in China. These are ancient Chinese manuscripts dated by 6 A.D., where pictures of wheeled chairs can be seen.
1595 is considered to begin the next stage of wheelchair historical development. A special luxury wheelchair equipped with footrests and armrests was made for the king of Spain Fillip II. The wheelchair resembled more a high pushcart and needed an invalid tender escort. In 1655 the British Stephen Farfler, a handicapped watchmaker, invented a three-wheeled vehicle which made it possible for him to move by himself. It was the first self-propelled and lever-driven wheelchair. By the 19th century self-propelled wheelchairs had been replaced with manual wheelchairs — a handicapped person pushed large back wheels by hands and thus drove the wheelchair. It was notably uncomfortable to move down the street in such wheelchair, because hands got very dirty. In 1881 an outer rim of minor diameter was added to the construction of the wheelchair. This rim was adjusted to the wheel. When pushing an outer rim a handicapped person needn't touch a wheel and in such a way the problem of "dirty hands" was solved.
It should be mentioned, wheelchairs of those times were rather bulky and it made difficult to keep and transport them. However, in 1933 an engineer Harry Jennings wanted to help his friend Herbert Everest and made the first portable wheelchair of light steel. It didn't take long to realize commercial opportunities of the invention and friends set up the company "Everest-Jennings" dealing with mass production of wheelchairs. This company was monopolizing the invalid care equipment market for many years.
Electric wheelchair was invented after WW2 by George Johann Klein,a Canadian inventor, for the injured war veterans. Electric wheelchair is considered to be one of Canada's greatest inventions."
Android

Submission + - Android web browser can not upload files (google.com)

Submitted by MichaelSmith
MichaelSmith writes: I have an android phone and wrote a photo blogging application so that I could upload pictures directly from the phone. When I finally got around to testing from the browser on android the <input type=file> tag turned into a message Uploads Disabled. So I googled around and found this hilarious bug report which unfortunately confirms that Android can not upload files.
Biotech

Submission + - Making sense of the Alzheimer's drug pipeline (fiercebiotechresearch.com)

Submitted by hlovy
hlovy writes: Alzheimer's disease is a thief. It robs seniors of a lifetime of experience and memories as it also robs their children and other loves ones of the benefits of their wisdom. It empties the wallets of families, and leaves many emotionally drained at seeing their elders slowly disappear into themselves.

So, what new answers has medical science has come up with? At best, it's good news and bad news. First, the bad news: there is no cure. There is not even complete agreement as to its cause. There is a general consensus that extracellular amyloid-beta (Aß) plaques and intraneuronal tangles in the brain are to blame. Drugs being developed tend to target these plaques. But, at best, they hold off symptoms temporarily.

Now, the good news. Biomarkers research is making it increasingly possible to determine whether a person might develop Alzheimer's disease, perhaps even decades in advance. The earlier the disease is detected, the better the chances are of being able to delay its symptoms or at least prepare for them. It could be argued, however, that this detection capability is, in itself, a good news/bad news scenario.

But, those sticky philosophical issues aside, medical progress marches on in its usual lurching way--many failures mixed with some progress. Here's a rundown of what's on the market, recent drug failures, pipeline prospects and the most recent research from the the laboratory trenches.
Iphone

Submission + - Follows App Tracks Your Online Popularity (apple.com)

Submitted by
Anonymous Coward
Anonymous Coward writes: "Follows lets you track your online popularity. Use this app to chart how many followers, friends, likes, subscriptions, connections or views you've accumulated across various social networks and services.

You can provide a custom URL to follows and have it track private data such as newsletter subscribers, comment counts, visitors, etc."

Submission + - KVM over IP: Eliminates the Distance Limitation As (smartvm.com)

Submitted by
peterdisuja
peterdisuja writes: "One or more computers can be controlled with a single set of peripherals using an IP KVM Switch. However, the key feature of this device is that it bypasses the control limits of a typical switch by allowing users to remotely exercise control over IP with 128 bit browser based access. There is no need for a physical connection in the form of wires. This device gives the freedom to access the systems over a local area network or a wide area network from remote locations. Compatible with almost every operating system and network device in the office environment, these switches add a greater flexibility to the network by placing the systems where they are required and the peripherals where they are desired."
Bug

Submission + - Adobe Confirms Flash Bug, To Release Fix Next Week (ibtimes.com)

Submitted by
iamrmani
iamrmani writes: "Adobe is planning to release the fix for a "critical" vulnerability that affected certain versions of its flash player during the week of March 21, 2011.

Adobe rated the bug as "critical," which, if exploited would allow malicious native-code to execute, potentially without a user being aware. In other words, the bug could cause a crash and potentially allow an attacker to take control of the affected system.

Read more: http://www.ibtimes.com/articles/122830/20110315/adobe-flash-flash-player-bug-zero-day-bug-patch-vulnerability-excel-authplay-microsoft-adobe-reader.htm#ixzz1GfTnuinb"
Media

Submission + - Microsoft Calls Time on Zune Player (thinq.co.uk)

Submitted by Stoobalou
Stoobalou writes: Microsoft has hinted that its Zune Player hardware has reached the end of the road and that no further devices would be developed or released.

The Redmond software giant's feeble forays into the media player market always faced an uphill struggle in the face of Apple's utter dominance, the various flavours of its iPod hardware hogging as much as 77 per cent of sales in recent years, but that didn't stop Microsoft from pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into a string of devices which almost universally failed to gain favour with either reviewers or the gadget-buying public.
Apple

Submission + - Apple's Role in Japan during the Tohoku Earthquake (kevinrose.com)

Submitted by
TiZon
TiZon writes: "As you all must have heard, the 5th largest earthquake in recorded history hit us on Friday, 2:30pm Japan Time. As Alex often says on TWiM, stories on the ground are often quite different from the stories in the news, and there is a tech story that I'd really like to tell: the story of Apple Inc in Japan."
Patents

Submission + - Red Hat Paid $4.2m To Settle Patent Suit (itwire.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: iTWire reports that 'Red Hat paid $US4.2 million to settle a patent infringement suit brought against it by FireStar Software, an intellectual property activist claims. Florian Mueller, who made a name for himself during the campaign to prevent the adoption of software patents in Europe some years ago, said he had dug up a court filing that showed the payment had been made.' Mueller says the payment made by Red Hat was kept secret but news about it surfaced in another suit.
Google

Submission + - Is Google cheating on us (blogspot.com)

Submitted by akm1489
akm1489 writes: Obviously google is most precise search engine but it is in one way or another giving its user a false impression.Generally people think how google returns millions of result in fraction of second : some people argue that it uses hardware accelerator for comparison,searching,sorting any other advanced techniques.May be all arguments are correct but the theme line is basically google doesn't returns millions of result for any query,it is there in their policy that they don't retrieve more than 1000 result for any query,demonstration is their in http://ananyamallik.blogspot.com/2011/02/is-google-cheating-on-ius.html
PlayStation (Games)

Best Buy Unapologetic About Charging For PS3 Firmware Updates 454

Posted by Soulskill from the a-fool-and-his-money dept.
donniebaseball23 writes "After discovering that electronics retailer Best Buy was charging ignorant customers $30 for the 'service' of installing updated firmware on PS3s, IndustryGamers got word from the company on its policy. Best Buy sees no problem with charging for this convenience, even though it's something Sony provides to PS3 owners completely free. 'While many gamers can handle firmware upgrades easily on their own, those customers who do want help can get it from Geek Squad, and we continue to evaluate this offering to ensure it meets their needs. The service goes beyond a firmware updates, and includes user account setup, parental control setup and other components,' a representative said."

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