Easy to Use Phone for Seniors
From Clarity(www.clarityproducts.com) comes the ClarityLife, an easy-to-use mobile phone that also serves as an emergency response device. ClarityLife is a GSM mobile phone designed specifically for older adults. It features a large display with prominent buttons — ideal for those with decreased vision or arthritis. The phone amplifies incoming sound up to 20 db to help those with hearing loss.
The ClarityLife is also equipped with a one-touch emergency response button located on the back of the phone. Seniors in need of assistance can press the red heart button and the phone will quickly call up to five contacts who could help. A siren sound lets users know the emergency response feature has been activated. The mobile phone will then cycle through the five contacts until someone is reached. The phone becomes available in August 2008.
Vocabulary Quiz Feeds the Hungry
People are starving all over the world. You can help feed someone every day simply by playing the free vocabulary game at www.FreeRice.com. Just go to the website and take the vocabulary quiz. Every word you try in the vocabulary quiz earns 20 grains of rice, which will be donated to the United Nations World Food Program (WFP) to feed the hungry. The rice donations are made possible by the sponsors who advertise on the FreeRice site. There are 55 possible levels in the vocabulary quiz. To hear one of the English vocabulary words pronounced out loud, click on the speaker symbol to the right of the word. Improve yourself and feed someone else — it’s a great idea.
Your Personalized Pocket Guidebook
ProfessionalTravelGuide.com has partnered with SharedBook Inc. to enable travelers to create their own professionally printed Pocket Guidebooks. By clicking on the eGuidebook tab at the site, travelers can produce their own guide containing destination and travel information such as sightseeing, nightlife, shopping and dining content and relevant addresses. They can also add personal notes, itinerary information and photographs. The Pocket Guidebook can be created for a single destination, or multiple locations.
The application is fully collaborative, enabling groups of travelers to work on the guides together. Anyone invited into the space can contribute personal notes and photographs and make their own book. After finalizing the content, the book is purchased and sent to the printer for on-demand output in laminated soft cover format.
Water Cooled Super Computer
Next month IBM will begin offering a supercomputer nicknamed the “Hydro-Cluster” that uses water to cool down the system and reduce overall energy consumption. With this new technology, data centers using Hydro-Cluster supercomputers can reduce their energy consumption by 40 percent and use 80 percent fewer air conditioners. IBM scientists estimate that water can be up to 4,000 times more effective in cooling computer systems than air.
The new Power 575 supercomputer, equipped with IBM’s latest POWER6 microprocessor, uses water-chilled copper plates located above each microprocessor to continuously remove heat from the electronics. The system supports very large clusters — hundreds of nodes — and enables extreme performance in dense packaging. A single rack features 14 2U nodes, each with 32, 4.7-Ghz cores of POWER6 - 3.5 TB of memory.
IBM researchers say they are also working on computers that would allow water to go directly inside the chip. Once inside, the water can be routed out of the computer and pumped into the heating system for re-use.
