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The power of tears: Why Google has its eye on smart contact lenses
When the cronut craze swept across New York in early spring of last year, the only major inconvenience associated with Dominique Ansel's novel culinary confection was the pain of waiting in line to get it. For a responsible person living with Type 1 (or Type 2) diabetes, like my good friend Cara, that wait time for a hip baked good would've been compounded by a few more irritating factors. First, there'd be a necessary finger prick test (administered in the open by an always on-hand glucometer) to measure blood sugar levels an hour before eating. Then, a guesstimate would need to be calculated of just how many carbs that precious SoHo sweet contained, followed by an adjustment of insulin delivery levels on a waist-worn pump. And, finally, a follow-up finger prick test would need to be done two hours after eating the cronut to once again establish a necessary insulin base line. That is true inconvenience. That is life with diabetes. And as you might imagine, not all diabetics are this disciplined. But Google wants to change that... with contact lenses.
Calico: a new Google company focused on extending life expectancy
Google's making a long-term business bet that, at first glance, may seem out of the ordinary: it's getting into healthcare. Its new company, Calico, will be focused on addressing the illnesses affecting the geriatric community, as well as aging in general. In Google CEO Larry Page's own words, the new enterprise, headed up by current Apple and Genentech chair Arthur D. Levinson, is geared towards "moonshot thinking around healthcare and biotechnology," so expect some pretty futuristic developments to come from the initiative. In an interview given to Time magazine, Page said that Calico will re-evaluate traditional thinking and approaches to healthcare, like cancer research, the advancement of which he concludes might "not [be] as big an advance as you might think." Page isn't dismissing that vein of research altogether, but claims any cures could only add about three years to a survivor's life -- a trivial gain in the long-run. Though he was willing to go on record with what's wrong with the current state of healthcare R&D, Page wouldn't elaborate as to what future products Calico could produce, saying only that Google, with its vast resources, should be doing more to contribute to the world's greater good.
Super-panoramic showdown for Mac
There are several photo-stitchers available for Mac (and several for iPhone as well), and most do a stellar job for stitching together 3-4 images into a panoramic image. However, I recently completed a project that required stitching together hundreds of images into some very large panoramas of several locations around beautiful Peoria, Illinois. What I found is that some of the programs which do admirable work on small stitching jobs performed very poorly on larger-scale panoramas. I tried several programs with varying results, and you can check out my showdown below.
