Gadgetell | Tech News, Reviews, and Interesting Things

You may or may not have noticed that along with the previously mentioned “Blu,“ the letter “i” has become prefixed to every product known to man.  Obviously, Apple has all the right in the world to do that (as they really popularized it) but Phillips is making a name for themselves with this “prefix-stealing,“ after the goLITE Blu.  Get ready for the iPill (the intelligent pill). 
Most of us already know what camera pills are (pill sized cameras that you swallow), and this is really a development from that idea further into the world of medicine. The pill can essentially do three things: it can monitor acidity levels, it can release medicine, and it can record temperatures.  All of which contribute towards its main aim of analyzing problems and acting upon them. 

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Surveys like this are always very interesting as they show the real truths behind the reliability of products, not just the output of the company’s marketing department.  In this case, SquareTrade, a research group, have taken it open themselves to tackle smart phones and to see their reliability (or lack thereof, as the case may be) over the first year of purchase.  And what better to use than 15,000 handsets consisting of BlackBerrys, iPhones and Treos.

As my not-so-inconspicuous title suggests, the Treo performed poorly, in fact, surprisingly poorly!  After one year 5.6% of all iPhones malfunctioned, followed by a sizable jump to 12% for the BlackBerry and a massive 16% of Treos.  This is incredibly worrying if you have just a bought a Treo, but comforting if you have selected the iPhone!

Read the full details after the break.

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Vehicular accidents due to sleepy drivers are a leading cause of death in the United States (or the world, for that matter). And it surprises me to know that not many people give thought or try to find ways to prevent such things from happening, even though the next person to doze off behind the wind shield could be them. But Mariana Figueiro and her colleagues at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in New York suggest that drivers take 30-minute blue light “baths” at truck stops and gas stations to keep them from falling asleep while driving. That would work, only you first have to find a way to build the blue LEDs in the cars to have the most efficient set up possible.

This suggestion is based on the knowledge that light has an indirect effect on our body’s internal clock. And research has found that short wavelengths have the strongest effect on people. That’s why Figueiro’s team is eager to find out how the body would be affected by blue LED light, in terms of alertness of people lacking sleep. When this concept materializes, I hope they remember this suggestion: build the blue LED lights on the tail lights of cars so that it beams directly to the driver right behind you, and would therefore keep him from falling asleep, just in case he felt sleepy.

Via [New Scientist]

• I have found a new medical solution, the iPill
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• Treo beats BlackBerry and iPhone—in malfunctions

Researchers who conducted focus-group discussions with teenagers from Netherlands have found a “shocking” discovery. Although most teens are aware of the damage that they are inflicting upon themselves by setting the volumes of their music players on high, they generally don’t care. That’s easy to understand, but what I don’t get is why many people are still puzzled as to why this is so. Shouldn’t it be general knowledge by now that most people really do prefer to listen to loud music? It’s the best way to really appreciate music anyway. And although I agree that this will have some bad “side-effects” to the listener in terms of his/her hearing abilities, I find it hard to believe that there is any other way to really feel your music, except through pumping up the volume and blocking out everything else around you.

Parents, doctors, and anyone else who thinks I’m a loose nut for saying they should leave the loud-music listening music lovers alone, consider this: what would you rather have, that your kids are a) locked up in their rooms inhaling toxic stuff and slitting their wrists or b) locked up in their rooms wearing noise-canceling headphones and the volume set to 11? It’s high time someone told you what blasting ourselves with hard rock really and truly means.

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While the headline may seem familiar it seems that the latest study in Japan that suggests that cell phones are not a brain cancer risk, is the first to look at the effects of hand set radiation levels on different parts of the brain. The study was conducted by the Tokyo Women’s Medical University and found “no increased risk of the three main types of brain cancer among regular mobile phone users.“

The study compared 322 brain cancer patients and 683 healthy people, where the cancer victims had one of the three most common types of brain tumor , namely glioma, meningioma or pituitary adenoma. After studying the radiation emitted, and rating them against sufferers and length of cell phone use they were able to conclude that the cell phone posed no danger:

Lead researcher Professor Naohito Yamaguchi said: “Using our newly developed and more accurate techniques, we found no association between mobile phone use and cancer, providing more evidence to suggest they don’t cause brain cancer.“

It has to be said that previous research has contradicted this latest research.

Via [BBC] Via [Gadgetell]

• I have found a new medical solution, the iPill
• Treo beats BlackBerry and iPhone—in malfunctions
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