Geni is a new ‘Web 2.0′ start-up company with a mission to build a complete family tree for humanity.
One particularly neat aspect of the site is that you can immediately start entering your information from the moment you arrive at the site. No signing up, checking emails, logging in, etc. Just visit the url and start entering information.
It’s also viral. You add the email addresses of your family members and they can access your tree and start adding information. Eventually, the trees start to merge and a larger family tree is created.
Could this have implications for medicine? - could we help track hereditary diseases through this kind of system?
Geni have a nice overview of their service on their blog.
It looks like the iPhone is going to be a closed system (thanks for the link David!). If this is true then it will mean that companies like Skyscape, Epocrates, etc will have to come up with an alternative to their current system of installable apps on Smartphones and PDAs if they want to develop for iPhone users.
One method of solving this problem would be to deliver the applications through the Safari browser on the phone. From the demonstration videos on www.apple.com the browser offers some unique ways of viewing web pages via the ‘multi-touch’ interface. This allows you to zoom in and around a page using two finger to stretch, zoom and scroll. Almost reminds me of Tom Cruise’s hand waving interface in Minority Report.
Whether browser delivery will be off-line or live will probably depend on things like wi-fi availabilty or how cheap the data calls are going to be.
This section is an edited directory of free medical videos indexed by subject. At the moment, the largest category is the Anatomy Videos section, with 40 videos.
I’ll be adding more videos over the coming weeks so check back. You can see the latest videos on the Medical Videos homepage.
MTAS is the new system for allocating jobs and training schemes to junior doctors in the UK. Applications for Specialty Registrar posts will be accepted in Jan 22nd so we’ve opened a new MTAS forum for any questions people have.
Steve Jobs has announced the the Apple iPhone will have a release date of June 2007.
The iPhone is really a PDA-phone like the Palm Treos, Blackberrys and Microsoft Windows Mobile devices (like my i-mate K-JAM).
This has significant implications for the medical world as a large percentage of doctors are currently using PDA phones for medical references, EMR integration, calculators and so on. - Update:TUAW is reporting that the iPhone won’t allow user installable applications. This information seem to be from a “security/information” attendant so I’m not sure how reliable this information is.
I can see many old Palm stalwarts now switching the iPhone. It will be interesting to see how Skyscape, PEPID, etc respond to this new device and when we’ll see a 5 Min CC iPhone version!
Update: Apple iPhone size comparison to Moto Q, Treo and Blackberry at Engadget.
Inspired by Clinical Cases Blog and their recent posts about Echos on YouTube I’ve been doing some searching for medical videos and thought I’d make a list:
