Panasonic has designed a new robot that helps deliver pharmaceutical drugs to patients. The robots will have access to the medical records and prescriptions of patients and will do the grunt work of front desk clerks and pharmacists.
The robots will be ready for release in several months in areas round Europe, the U.S., and Japan. In a hospital with about 400 beds, one of these robots will have the ability to finish the job of delivering prescriptions in about 2 hours. Generally it takes a human pharmacist about 4 hours to get the job done.
Out of all the social networks that exist, I think that I hate Tagged the most. Yup, I hate it more than Yaari. The way that Tagged grew was by sending unsolicited e-mail invitations after taking over the contact list of user e-mail accounts.
It was inevitable that Tagged would be attacked legally by someone, but I seriously did not expect a whole state to sue them. The attorney general of New York announced earlier that they plan to sue Tagged for deceptive email practices and privacy invasion.
“This company stole the address books and identities of millions of people,” stated New York Attorney General Cuomo in a press release. “Consumers had their privacy invaded and were forced into the embarrassing position of having to apologize to all their email contacts for Tagged’s unethical – and illegal – behavior. This very virulent form of spam is the online equivalent of breaking into a home, stealing address books, and sending phony mail to all of an individual’s personal contacts. We would never accept this behavior in the real world, and we cannot accept it online.”
Tagged started in San Francisco about 5 years ago and claims to have 70 million registered users with 4 billion pageviews per month. The company was founded by Greg Tseng and Johann Schleier-Smith.
“Today’s announcement by New York Attorney General Cuomo is disheartening,” stated Tagged founder Greg Tseng in a blog post. ”Identify theft and invasion of privacy are very serious allegations and it is not accurate to portray Tagged, or any other social network, in this regard.
Out of all the USB-powered gadgets I’ve written about in the past, I think that the i.Saw Chainsaw takes the prize for being the wackiest. The i.Saw can be preordered at a price of $60+shipping. All it takes for the saw to work is to be plugged in to a USB plug-and-play port. Although the saw is much smaller than a real saw, it is still able to cut through wood.
The i.Saw works on Mac or PC. The guide bar size is about 10″ and there are replaceable accessories available on i.Saw’s website. There is also a safety activation button and protective guard built in.
When I think of the i.Saw I can only think of that scene in Office Space where the three employees take a bat to the printer in an open field. With the iSaw, you don’t even need to take the printer to an open field, just demolish it on the spot. WHY DOES IT SAY PAPERJAM WHEN THERE IS NO PAPERJAM?!
The video of this 7 foot long RC helicopter is scaled from a Mil Mi-24 chopper. The original Mi-24 was produced by the Mil Moscow Helicopter Plant operated by the Soviet Air Force. The Mi-24 is manned by two people and has bullet proof glass. In total the original 55 foot Mi-24 could carry 8 troops or 14 stretchers. The RC helicopter shown above does not have specs available, but the video proves that it works flawlessly.
Back in late May, Russian investment firm Digital Sky Technologies bought about $200 million worth of Facebook preferred stock. The company has followed up today with another investment. Digital Sky is now purchasing $100 million of common stock from current and former Facebook employees.
This will give employees a chance to cash out from all of their work and may motivate some to stay. On the other hand, some may just want to take their earnings and run. Digital Sky will be paying about $14.77 per share, valuating Facebook at $6.5 billion. The $200 million preferred share purhase gave Digital Sky 2% ownership in Facebook, giving Facebook a valuation of $10 billion at the time.
The combined $300 million investment gives Digital Sky a 3.5% total ownership in Facebook. When Microsoft Corporation invested $240 million in Facebook in October 2007, they received about 1.6% ownership at a $15 billion valuation and an exclusive ad partnership until 2011.
The Israel Technion University has designed a tiny robot for medical purposes. The robot was designed using Micro-Electro Mechanical Systems (MEMS) technology. The robot has the ability to crawl around in a person’s veins in order to make a diagnosis and potentially aid in treating artery blockage and cancer. The size of the robot is about one millimeter.
There isn’t an engine or onboard controls in the robot. It is able to move around using a magnetic field wielded on the patient’s body. The tiny robot has outstretched arms to grip the vessel walls in order to travel around. YIKES!
The robot can be moved around with a speed of about 9 millimeters per second using external magnetic fields. The advantage of using the magnetic fields is that the robot can move around for an unlimited amount of time without needing a recharge. Research is still underway, but progress is being made. After that the tiny robot may be coming to a hospital near you.
GumGum is an analytics and publisher monetization company that has two license models catering to publishers of larger and smaller sizes. According to a recent SEC filing GumGum raised $2.6 million in funding led by GRP Ventures. First Round Capital also participated in this round.
Thus far, GumGum raised a total of $3.8 million in total. Last year, First Round and Crosscut Ventures invested $1 million in the first round of funding. GumGum was founded by CEO Ophir Tanz. One of GumGum’s biggest clients is the Gawker network for image licensing and monetization.
Tweetdeck, my favorite Twitter client has raised additional funding to power their platform. Back in March the company raised about $300,000. The announcement was made by angel investor John Borthwick at the TechCruch Real-Time Stream CrunchUp event last week. TweetDeck is compatible with Windows, Mac, Linux, and the iPhone.
What makes TweetDeck unique is that when the company first started it was a one man show. That man is Iain Dodsworth and now he is fully armed with VC money to take TweetDeck to the next level. If you don’t have a Twitter account and TweetDeck, get it now! you will not regret it.
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