The Future of Hospitals

Face it, this is the way things will work in just a few years' time. Some great technology!

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Simple things in life that make it so much more bearable...

The upcoming version of Chrome (my favorite browser for private use) allows you to copying and pasting text from the browser without all the fonts, colors and spacing and pasting it in another browser window/tab (e.g. Google Docs).

Read more about it here.

Search-Replace in Word Made Easier

Most of us know how to do a search-replace in Word (OK, those who don’t know it could try CTRL+H for starters). It is quite easy to use in most cases.

But what if you would like to replace a double paragraph break with a single one? Or an En dash (–) with an Em dash (—)?

For these scenarios, Microsoft published a Technet article called 20 Helpful Search Strings for Finding Special Characters in Word. This should make cleaning up documents and replacing special characters much easier.

Sheryl WuDunn: Our century's greatest injustice

If there were more people like here, the world would be a better place!

Some Things I Had to Learn the Hard Way With my New iMac

Things that Steve Jobs should definitely look into improving in the next version of Mac OS X:

• Get a Delete button just like on every other keyboard or at least train the user to use fn + Backspace. Took me a while to find out.
• There is actually a way to move files instead of copying them over to another place and then deleting the originals: hold the cmd key () while dragging the files to another folder.

In the meantime, I have ordered Office for Mac 2008 and I am officially elligible for an upgrade to Office 2011 when it arrives (you can do it here if you purchased Office 2008 between August 2010 and the end of this year).

I still can't get some of my Hebrew documents working properly, but I will look into this later.

I also managed to severely reduce boot times by doing the following things:

• Setting my preferences to boot from hard disk by default and not the network by going to System Preferences and choosing Startup disk and clicking your HD (see article here, another thing for Steve to follow up on)
• Disabling some startup Login Items (see article here)

In short: fun stuff!

Please Place your Toothbrush in an Upright Position!

Design by Yanko.

Malaria Mosquitos Shoot ‘Em Up

Funded by Bill Gates is an idea to, in a cheap way, shoot down malaria mosquitoes with simple consumer electronics. Remember, malaria accounts for the death of 250 million people per year! Actually, shooting the mosquitoes down is only a small part of what they do and what they invent.

This is an enjoyable presentation and kudos to TED for coming up with these interesting topics!

And I warn you: You’ll never think about malaria again without a smile on your face!

Gugel and Lena-English

Just like in 2009 when Google predicted that Norway would win, Google was right about Lena winning the 2010 contest.

One of the things that make Lena so interesting is her English accent (if we may call it English at all!).

In her honor, I have transcribed Satellite into Lena-English. Enjoy!

Satellite Songtext - Lena

Aye went everywhere for you
Ah even did my haiffur you
Ah bought new underwhere, they blue
And I wear ‘em just the other die

Love, you know I’ll fight foyyou
I left on the porch light foyyou
Whether you are sweet or crue
I’m gonna love you either why

Love, öhw, love, I gotta tell you how I feel about you
‘Cause I, öhw, I can’t go a minute without your love
Like a satellite, I’m in orbit all the way awownd you
And I would fall out into the night
Cang gahw a minute without your love

Love, I got it bappa you
I siphed the best I hahv for you
You sometimes make me sahd and blue
Wouldn’t have it any other way

Love, my aim is straight and true
Cupid’s arrow is juss for you
I even pehnted my toe nehls for you
I did it just the other die

CHORUS

Where you go, I’ll fallau
You set the pice, we’ll take it fast and so
I fallau in your way,
You got me, you got me
A force more powerful than gravity
It’s physic, dezz no eSkype

Love, my aim is straight and true
Cupid’s arrow is juss for you
I even painted my toe nehls for you
I did it just the other die

CHORUS

The Future of Parking

As you may find out over time, I enjoy sharing those ideas with you that I think could make life better for all of us. I especially appreciate ideas that are simple and innovative. I very much enjoy ideas that break the limits of conventional thinking. However, I am also intrigued by ideas that are basically a preview of what the future may bring and that solve problems in an elegant fashion.

Among the Future of... series at ZDNet, I found a nice short video on what the future of parking could look like.

Some top issues that everyone would like to see solved are:

• Not having enough change in your wallet and having to go change money somewhere
• Running out of parking time and having to return all the way just to add some coins
• Forgetting to return in time (fines!)
• Not knowing whether enough empty parking spots are available at your destination
• Having to drive around many times to find a parking spot, causing 30% of city traffic congestion

Whereas in many cities you will already find the option of paying with a banking or debit card, some other innovations are being tested currently at Los Angeles and San Francisco that use mobile technology to refill your parking meter, view parking availability online, set reminders, etc.

ZDNet reports:

Making Math a Conversation

Now here's a man after my heart. Someone who thinks out of the box and teaches other people to think properly. These are the tools that will bring our children ahead in the game and will make them love learning.



And, while you are at it, check out his blog on http://blog.mrmeyer.com/. You will be sure to learn a thing or two yourself!

Google Now Has an Advanced Sort Function!

As you may have read in my earlier post, I had filed a Google Idea for a better sort functionality within Google Spreadsheets. Well, it looks like Google was on it already:

With thanks to @beatgi for the handsup and Tweetphoto screenshot!

Self-imposed Insomnia

I can so identify! Every day, I tell myself to go to sleep earlier and every day I find myself looking at my watch before going to sleep and thinking: UH-OH!

From the merciless crowd at Doghouse Diaries:

Facebook: You May Want to Check Your Privacy Settings

As everyone knows, Facebook has problems respecting their user’s privacy. Whereas in 2005 the default policy was that all Facebook users could only see your name, picture, gender and networks, users can now see just about everything except for your birthday and contact info since April 2010.
I am always amazed by people who are, with just a few graphs, able to tell a story with great clarity. Matt Mc Keon from the Visual Communication Lab at IBM Research has visualized this encroachment on your privacy with an animation. All Facebook took screenshots of this animations that work on all browsers:

You may want to check your privacy settings now (click here to do so).

Careful where you dump your garbage!

The idea of a drive-by shooting, slightly exaggerated, as quoted by Snopes:

This is a captured “garbage truck” from Gaza. The truck is set up to fire Kasem rockets and then drive off innocently. The note pasted on the driver’s door says - "In case of traffic violations, please contact The Palestinian Authority.” The Israelis have evidence of ambulances and emergency vehicles set up the same way.

Hat tip: Uncle Benny

Update: Fixed first picture.

Vote for my Google Product Ideas!

I have submitted some ideas for enhancements in Google Apps.
My idea for Google Documents:

"Have the prevalent page settings (A4 / Letter) for a country automatically set as default, according to the user's country settings."

The reason for this idea is that, whenever I want to print a document, it prints a PDF in Letter size, because of its default settings:


However, the standard paper format in Europe is A4. Google should be able to know what the Country’s settings are and at least allow you to change the default paper size.
For Google Spreadsheets, I asked for a better sort function:

"Have a sort function to sort just like in Excel: first this column ascending/descending, then the other column, etc. The current sort function (one column only) does appear to be ready for the real business experience. Yet ;)"

Spreadsheets only has a very basic sort functionality: select a column and sort the whole sheet from A-Z or from Z-A. However, I often would need to sort multiple columns in order of priority. This is currently not possible.
Lastly, another idea for Spreadsheets that has to do with filtering data:

Have a functionality like Excel AutoFilter where you can filter columns based on values or Custom queries like 'Show rows where A1 equals...', etc.

IMHO, Spreadsheets does a poor job when it comes to filtering columns.
Feel free to vote for my ideas here.

Shalom World!

Welcome to my blog!

I realize that the post title is not very original, but I figured I needed a Jewish but nerdish title to denote my several interests. I am planning to post about:

• stuff happening in the family
• my ideas about Judaism
• stuff that relates to computer software that I am interested in

 Anyway, check this place out, I will soon fill it with my mind spinnings!