Mobile phones are often in the news for their connectivity. But if you’ve not heard of cell phones involved in tele-radiology and tele-dermatology, you soon will. The on-board megapixel camera ina  phone can scan a leg wound and send it off to a physician for diagnosis.

A Swiss study, comparing face-to-face evaluation of leg wounds and remote consultation found the latter to be very effective, reducing patients’ hospital stay.

Another development in Sweden, is to attach a disposable microfluidic chip to a cell phone and use it to analyze a blood sample. LG has a phone for diabetes patients that can monitor their bloood sugar! The information can be then sent to a healthcare provider via text message or email .

On a ligter note there’s something called MusicID, from Cingular. A subscriber dials #43 (which are the letters I and D preceded by the pound sign) from his handset when he hears a song the radio. He needs to hold up the phone the radio for a few seconds after that. The network then checks the song against a database of some 3 million pieces of music, identifies it and sends back a text message with the name of the song and the artist. It’s like an audio Google search! It costs $.99 per song identified.

And then it gets funky. Another service called MusiCall lets someone buy and send a song to the cellphone of someone (this service is available in the US only.)  You can send the song with a personalized message attached, too! It costs $1.50 per track.

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Not surprising to hear today that yahoo is launching a mobile phone service called Go Mobile that will be a bigger thing that the existing Yahoo Mobile, for sure. With 400 million Yahoo users, that’s a scale enough to create an economy comparable to a small country. It already has a Skype-like service, called Yahoo Messenger.

Nokia is partnering with Yahoo in Go Mobile. Likewise, as reported by Endgadget, Google has already struck a deal with Motorola for a similar venture. Interesting to watch how search engines will be battling for the tiny real estate on your phone…

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Worth remembering in this day of cell phones that are different kinds of ‘radio’ transmiters than its inventor ever envisioned.

One hundred and four years ago to this day, Marconi sent the first radio transmission across the Atlantic Ocean from England to Canada. What did he transmit? The letter "s!"

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Every year without fail, a study turns up about how TV impacts children, sending ripples that only go so far as a nice 6′ O clock news byte. This one, is about the negative influence on a child’s ability to learn, read and TVs correlation to low academic skills.

It has always stupified me why people even study this area. Do we still need proof? Any educator wil tell you as much. Heck, anyone with an ounce of common sense will tell you that most of what might be deemed ‘useful’ on TV can be found in books, or out in the garden. Sidebar: The average child spends more time watching TV than in school. So says the Univ. of Michigan.

Anyway, the report this week is about 3 studies. One study (from New Zealand’s University of Otago) was done with children between the ages of 5 and 15. Another from the University of Washington on young children and reading comprehension. The other is from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg school in Stanford, California.

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There’s a terrible street fad called ‘happy slappings’ supposedly sweeping across Britain. It refers to a gang assaulting an unsuspecting victim for no reason other than to capture the event on a camera phone. The scene is then posted on a web site.

Londeners refer to such street behavior as ‘yobbery’ which is really a term used to describe low-life, anti-social behavior. The word ‘yob’ if I recall, was a reversal of the spelling of ‘boy.’

The "yob crackdown," as Blair puts it, will be top priority, now, with the news today that London won the bid for the 20012 Olympics.

Sure, it’s 7 years away, but take a look at the Olympic stadium!. It will be served by an ‘Olympic Javelin high-speed shuttle.’ I bet there’ll be a lot of security cameras onboard!

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If you haven’t heard of a desktop search tool called Blinkx, check it out.

Blinkx appears to be much faster and smarter than Google’s desktop search. (I tried it and it did a good job but crashed my PC twice.)

The big incentive to try it was the fact that its creator, Suranga Chandratillake, appears to be of Sri Lankan origin. The other, was a feature called Smart Folders, that is something I have been looking for for a few projects I have in mind.

A few drawbacks right now are the display of the categories of results. Blinkx uses icons for email, web pages,  etc., but displays the file names in very small text. But that could probably be fixed.

Blinkx indexes files in the background, so it is very much an under-the-hood utility. By default, it is set do do its searching only when your computer is idle, so as not to slow it down, but you could also set it to fast, or never.

I find it a great way to search for a article I have previously written, or an email I know i have saved somewhere pertaining to an interview I have conducted. I found another neat feature: the ability to preview the contents of of a PDF in the search box. Blogger, renowned tech journalist and author Om Malik has called Blinkx the ‘Mercedes of desktop search.’ 

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It was just last week that I wrote about Tempe, Arizona taking a bold step to make wireless networking just like any other utility.

Now news is out that Tucson is adding hot-spots as well! Not just around coffeeshops and bookstores, but to the downtown area. A citywide group called the Tucson Wi-Fi Alliance is behind it.

By this time next year, cities going W-Fi will be as newsworthy as saying <insert your city name here> has just added more gas stations of water fountains!

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My public library is my favorite stop –even Borders comes second– whenever I am looking up a topic or just in a magazines browsing mood. But it’s not just the printed material that makes libraries wonderful environments. A librarian will beat a Google search any day. Just stop by a reference desk and ask!

Then there’s the technology. If you have been to a public library recently you’ll notice an increase in computer terminals. This is a result of the LSTA, the Library Services and Technology Act, that channels funding for technology developments such as networking, digitizing records, and broadband connections. You never think of libraries playing a part in broadband penetration, but a recent study by Harris Interactive, reported here, says that the percentage of people in the U.S. who were online at libraries and schools jumped 4% over last year. (This is compared to just a 1% increase those online at home and work)

Speaking of broadband penetration, take a look at ‘Broadband Nation’ a special feature in Business2.0 Magazine.

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Tempe, Arizona is definitely the ‘smart place to be.’ If you’re not from Arizona and only think of our state as dry and hot, take a look at this page. How hot is that? The plan is to drop a ‘mesh network’ over the entire metro area, starting with this provider, WazTempe.

I have written quite a bit on how Wi-Fi could be deployed in developing countries, using mobile and fixed structures in villiages. I knew it had to happen. Tempe is using streetlamps for the access points, but the most interesting, is the ‘Mobile Commando Unit’ –basically a car, outfitted with Wi-Fi hardware. Check it out here.

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