UC Berkely Health Service Data Stolen

Hackers had access for six months to a server at the University of California, Berkely, and stole personal and healthinformation of over 160,000 students, alumni, and parents.

The compromised server housed information from the UC Berkeley campus health service center and contained “Social Security numbers, health insurance information, and nontreatment medical information, such as immunization records and names of some of the physicians they may have seen for diagnoses or treatment,” according to the spokeswoman.

UC Berkeley began notifying students, alumni, and parents on Friday.  They were told that their personal information had been accessed without authorization.  The hacking took place around April 6 to the 9th, 2009.  The university should have notified everyone about this sooner.

The school has set up a site that is updated with the latest information as it becomes available.

Kindle DX

The Kindle DX is now available on Amazon.  The screen size is 9.7″ and costs $489.  “You never have to pan, you never have to zoom, you never have to scroll.  You just read,” Amazon’s Jeff Bezos said at the New York launch.

Amazon announced deals with three leading textbook publishers to put their content on the reader.  Other deals include the New York Times, Washington Post and Boston Globe to put their editorial on the device.

100 MPG Hummer H3

Raser Technologies unveiled a prototype Hummer H3 that gets 100 miles per gallon.  The prototype has an E-REV power train engine, and three lithium ion battery packs located in the rear of the Hummer.  The batteries will let you travel about 40 miles, then the range extender starts up.  Allowing you to travel an additional 400 miles before it needs to be plugged in.  Raser Technologies plans to start production in 2011.

Raser Technologies

Google Maps The Swine Flu Outbreak

If you are trying to keep up with the latest swine flu cases.  This Google Maps mashup will show suspected and confirmed cases.  The map is updated regularly.

Smart Car Powered by Tesla

The Smart car is about to get some added electric power. The power will come from Tesla Motors. It will have a range of 100 miles. The range will be good enough for most people. The motor and gear box is from the original Tesla Roadster.

Tesla said they plan to launch the Smart EV in December of 2009.

Standardized Plug for Electric Vehicles

The automakers and energy firms have come to an agreement on a three-point, 400 volt plug that will allow electric cars to recharge anywhere in the world.  This is coming from the German energy firm RWE.  Caroline Reichert with RWE stated “a car can be recharged in Italy in exactly the same way as in Denmark, Germany or France.”  Some of the automakers in agreement include BMW, Ford, General Motors, Toyota and several other companies.  This is certainly a step in the right direction.  Now if the mobile phone manufactures could agree on one connection type.

Tesla Unveils Latest Electric Car

Tesla Motors has unveiled the new Model S. It is a fully electric car and the price tag is $49,000. They’re planning to start production in late 2011. This car is beautiful. Tesla has an eye for awesome design.

The link to the Model S page is here.

Will this search engine really answer your questions?

Later on this year Wolfram Alpha will unveil a computational search engine. This search engine will give you precise answers to anything you ask. Wolfram is best known for his Mathematica, powerful computational software.

So how will this actually work, the engine is designed using advanced algorithms. So if you type “How many bones are in the human body?”, the system will take all of the available information and give you the answer. Unlike Google that gives you pages of websites.

In theory this sounds promising. We will have to wait until later this year to find out how well this really works.

You can find out the latest developments at Wolfram Blog.

Kindle 2 Review

I got a Kindle 2 and have been using it a couple of days. Below are my thoughts:

Design: The design is improved, with curved lines and smoother look. Still not awe-inspiring to me, but an improvement. Just making it black would improve its looks by several points. The page-turning problem is fixed.

USB: The Kindle 2 can charge via USB. This is an improvement as many gadgets are now rely on USB to charge.

Text-to-Speech: It can read text to you. Not bad but not great. The text-reading is ok and is usable. It is in no way in the ball park of a true actor reading an audio book. I had it read a few things to me and found it ok to use and mostly understandable. Speech technology is much improved than even 5 years ago. It understands abbreviations and other things that older speech recognition software struggled with years ago.

Faster: The device is faster.

Navigation Button: It has a navigation button. It works pretty well. I am not sure navigation is totally figured out on the device yet.

SD Slot: A little odd that they took the SD slot away. So, most people probably lost storage space moving from Kindle 1 to Kindle 2. Extra space on Kindle 1 was good for loading lots of extra MP3s and audio books.

Additional Random Notes

Nothing beats the Kindle for travel. It is a superior travel companion, especially in the US. I traveled several places in the world with the Kindle 1 last year. (Note: the wireless does not work outside the US, but you can read all the books you have loaded.)

It seems like they would add a big “Amazon” button to encourage more browsing of the book store. You have to navigate to the menu to choose to shop at Amazon.

Bottom line, I really like it-  this is the future.
I find I like reading it for linear (non-reference) style reading more than a regular book.

What does a Kindle Not Do Well?

1) Graphics: Better eInk price points will develop over time. Also, color eInk is in the lab. Once color and graphics get perfected, this will be interesting.

2) Reference books: If you have a book that you will use as a reference – and will keep to flip through and re-read often – then you will want to buy the actual physical book. I wonder what kind of UX design would make eBooks good for the “reference book experience”. That is something we will have to mull over. I think it is possible. This is one area that Amazon may want to think about when desiging the larger “Textbook Kindle” that is rumored for the future.

Why buy a Kindle?

Well, beyond just being an natural early adopter, below is my math:

Number of books I buy a year: at least 30 (approx)
Amount of money I save buying a Kindle book vs the physical book $10 (approx)

Total Savings: $300 (30 x 10)
Cost of Kindle $359
Net Kindle Cost: $59

So, if you buy a lot of books, you may have a “Net Kindle Cost” that makes sense to buy a Kindle.

Thinking About Solar

Bill Gross, someone I find interesting and have followed for over 10 years now (check out the history of IdeaLab), gave a talk at TED concerning solar energy. See the video below.

I guess it should not be surprising that a really efficient solar energy collector would look like a flower.

Soar is where the planet gets its energy, and if harnessed better, we could use it for more of our energy usage. Below is a map from the presentation of where the “hot spots” are for solar within the US. The darker red spots get the most sunlight, the blue areas get the least.