Filed under: Internet, Web services, Google, web 2.0

Google has officially launched a public beta of its new health and medical information service. Google has been privately testing Google Health in partnership with the Cleveland Clinic since February. But now anybody can sign up for the free service.

So what exactly is Google Health? It’s a one stop for managing your personal medical records, sharing that information with doctors who use the service, and searching for health related information. You can use the service to get your prescriptions filled, check up on test results, or create alerts that will remind you to take your pills or get vaccinated on a regular basis.

Google says it won’t advertise on the site, and it won’t share your private data with anyone without your authorization. But the service could collect and use anonymous aggregated data.

[via Computer Magazine]

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Filed under: Fun, World wide web, Web services, web 2.0

Twitter may be addictive, popular with the geek crowd, and possibly even the next Facebook. But the service sure goes down pretty frequently. You’d think Twitter’s frequent downtime/outages would present an opportunity for another micro-blogging service like Pownce or Jaiku to swoop in and steal the site’s user base. But once you’ve got a few hundred followers, you’re pretty much locked in to the service.

So what’s a Twitter addict to do when they can’t login to the service? Well, the first thing you should do is check and see if you’re the only one having the problem. And since you can’t send out a tweet asking your followers for help, you can turn to Is Twitter Down. This web site makes Down for Everyone or Just Me look feature-rich. While that site will actually spit out a sentence letting you know if the internet page you enter is down or not, Is Twitter Down gives you a monosyllabic answer to just one question: Is Twitter down.

The site does have one more trick up its sleeve. Click on Yes or No and you get taken to an Amazon product page for a rather appropriate item.

Oh, and in related news, Down for Everyone or Just Me is down this day. There’s a nice message on the site letting us know it will be back soon though.

[via ouroboros]

Thanks deathwombat!

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An anonymous reader writes “After a Google user posted a profane picture of the Hindu saint Shivaji, Indian authorities contacted Google to ask for his IP address. Google complied. He was arrested and is reported to have been beaten by a lathi and asked to use the same bowl to eat and to use in the toilet. Not surprisingly, Google is a keen to play this down as Yahoo is being hauled over the coals by US Congress for handing over an IP addresses and emails to the Chinese Government which resulted in a Chinese democracy activist being jailed.” Readers are noting that these are 2 unrelated cases — the latter is several months old.

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An anonymous reader writes “Two message boards devoted to the same topic have each been on-line for roughly eight years. One is censored, and the other is not. The two forums are virtually the only ones devoted to their topic (polygraph testing, a fairly arcane one), so they’re in “competition” only with each other. The result? The uncensored forum has more than six times as many posts as the censored one.” To be fair, there are a few other differences between the two forums, but the point might still be valid.

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jlunavtgrad writes “I recently attended an embedded engineering conference and was surprised at how many vendors were selling tools to analyze source code and scan for bugs, without ever running the code. These static software analysis tools claim they can catch NULL pointer dereferences, buffer overflow vulnerabilities, race conditions and memory leaks. Ive heard of Lint and its limitations, but it seems that this newer generation of tools could change the face of software development. Or, could this be just another trend? Has anyone in the Slashdot community used similar tools on their code? What kind of changes did the tools bring about in your testing cycle? And most importantly, did the results justify the expense?”

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aos101 writes “The Renesys blog has an interesting story about networks advertising the old address space of the L root name server after ICANN changed the IP address last November. These networks were also running root name servers on the old IP address of the L root name server up until last week, so any DNS servers still using the old IP address might have been getting their answers from these bogus name servers. A very cursory examination by Renesys of one of these bogus servers found that it appeared to be providing correct responses, which might be why no one noticed the problem. As Renesys points out, the volume of traffic to a root server is staggering, so the people running these bogus root servers must have had a reason. What did they get out of it?”

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bfwebster writes “A story in the New York Times reports that Japan, a country that rebuilt itself as a technological power after World War II, now faces an increasing shortage of college graduates with degrees in science and engineering. States the article: ‘By one ministry of internal affairs estimate, the digital technology industry here is already short nearly half a million engineers.’ The article goes on to point out that the overall trend of waning interest in science and technology has been going on for ‘almost two decades’ and that the shortage is made worse by the traditional reluctance of Japanese companies to hire and use foreign workers. The US has had a similar trend for quite some time: ‘Undergraduate engineering enrollment declined through most of the 1980s and 1990s, rose from 2000 through 2003, and declined slightly in current years.’”

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Racketiciel writes “A French user asked for a refund after buying a ASUS computer that came with Windows XP and other software pre-installed. ASUS tried to apply a procedure which cost more money to the consumer that they’ll give back … The court ruled in favor of the user, who received back 130 Euro (~200 $) for the software. Here’s the ruling (PDF, French). In France, this is the fourth victory for refund seekers during the last two years, and many people are now filing for refunds (in French). Two French associations (AFUL and April) published a press release on this victory the same day a important hearing happened.” The English-language press release linked above gives a pretty good idea of what happened here, for those unsuited to wading through French.

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thefickler writes “The Chinese Government has issued orders that all entertainment web sites and regular TV programming be shut down totally for the next 3 days. Only web sites covering the current tragic 7.8 magnitude earthquake and TV stations broadcasting CCTV earthquake programming will be granted to remain live.” Can anyone with Web access in China confirm this report? From an AP story on the state of communications in the country right now, it appears at least that China is (despite ongoing monitoring) allowing freer than usual communications in the wake of the quake.

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dcblogs writes “The Chinese outsourcing market, at $1.7 billion last year, is growing at 38% a year, according to research by the Everest Group. This is creating opportunities for Westerners who want to go to China, learn the language, and help these Chinese offshore companies reach overseas markets. There are job opportunities for people with management experience or who are young and willing to gamble. Here’s the story of one 25-year-old who started learning Mandarin on his plane ride over to China, three years ago, and is now an international development manager for an IT offshoring firm.”

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